#that dlc did not handle like... anything well really

[soup-mother]

honest hearts should have let you cover joshua graham in tar and set him on fire and throw him in the grand canyon again and explicitly state that it's because he's a Mormon. i think that would have improved that dlc a tiny bit. still would suck, but a lil bit more self awareness of the relationship between mormons and indigenous Americans (by having everyone set fire to mormons and explain the history and reasoning behind such an action directly into the camera) would have gone a long way.

[theygender]

I've got too many games I want to play and not enough free time 😭 I still need to finish my BG3 playthrough but since Endless Ocean: Luminous came out I've been playing a lot of that instead. Also just got back into Wizard101 last night. Started playing House Flipper again last weekend. Still need to finish BOTW so I can start a TOTK playthrough and finish Pokemon Shield so I can start on Pokemon Violet. I've been fighting off the urge to start up a new Skyrim playthrough for weeks. My brother just told me that Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is getting ported to the Switch. And now I'm suddenly feeling inspired to replay DAI... And throughout all of this I'm also playing the hell out of DragonVale on my phone. Someone just pay me to play video games all day please

[memorymessage]

Now doing DLC again and being more attentive, while also properly finishing up NPC questlines, and I'm just getting more disappointed with Miquella's story and the way it was handled in DLC.

With all the verbiage going on in the base game of how powerful Miquella's allure was, and how he had the ability to command loyalty through the guise of kindness, you would think it would be like dealing with brainwashing, to some degree. Miquella is charming people into thinking he is more altruistic than he actually is.

I'm really let down that it just ended up being "actually he's just kinda shady, I guess. You should kill him", with no real substance.

The St. Trina dialogue was super cheesy and blatantly lacking reason. Begging us to kill Miquella, and I'm just sitting here thinking "why?"

All the legacy Miquella had built up around himself, including cut content, like St. Trina charitably helping the merchant nomads with their trauma and insomnia. Growing the Haligtree with his blood, welcoming every living being to his to his town without prejudice, and spreading an overall message of peace.

Throughout all this, you're telling me it chalked up to "don't let him be a god :( It would be bad for him, I guess! Also...he's doing weird things with his step bro! And some other shady stuff, I guess!"

I was expecting something along the lines of what we see with Marika, and her fallacies in the Golden Order. Miquella is truly extremely wise, he does command loyalty, and he does desire for peace. But you cannot obtain true peace by placing people under a brainwash of loyalty. And when that illusion is shattered, that alone is what causes people to question him.

But in the DLC, some people are following Miquella for their own purposes, and for the ones that are trying to be loyal to him, it doesn't even take all that much to make them stop following him. That doesn't lend anything to the narrative that Miquella inspired loyalty.

A realization that Miquella is using mind control would have been a far more interesting plot than whatever was haphazardly put together in the DLC. This DLC felt like a reduction of Miquella's character, not an exploration of it. Everything about Miquella that was alluded to in the base game was just... abandoned in place of this new characterization.

All of this, on top of the weird Radahn storyline that came out of nowhere (which I already ranted about), and also knowing that one of the most interesting plots in the game—Godwyn—will never be addressed... it all just leaves me disappointed.

This is genuinely the first time a FromSoft game or DLC has made me want to say to Miyazaki "actually, I think you're wrong here." The DLC in terms of level area, boss, and enemy designs? Immaculate. But with all the hype around Miquella, you would think the writing would have also had a shine as well. I just don't know if it did...

[miquella-everywhere]

even if the dlc did make sense in the lore somehow (which it doesn't) it would still suck lmao. like the themes of the cycle of trauma and abuse is so overdone and it's tired. plus it's like 70% dark souls and bloodborne references. and we didn't even really get to meet the titular character. really makes me not want to play the game tbh.

Yeah I agree about the overused cycle of trauma thing somewhat, but y'see I think it could have been done fine if Fromsoft didn't completely flip Miquella's lore on its head:

In the base game Miquella rejected Fundamentalism and the Erdtree because it could do nothing to cure Malenia of her rot and he was appalled by the Erdtree/Marikas treatment of the Misbegotten and other races of the world. He literally created God Fuck Off metal to grant Malenia respite and could also clearly drive away the Frenzied Flame as well as the other Outer Gods with it's potential ... But now Miquella is all about following in his moms footsteps and being a brainwasher who wants to marry his brother???? Huh?????????????

Literally. How does Miquella creating an Age of "Compassion" fix the fact that his sister is infested with an Outer God and his brother is literally unalived cancer and spreading at an alarming rate????

I can somewhat understand the DLC stance where Miquella wishes to purge/atone for all the horrible things that his mother has done, but the problem is that it's conveyed in such a way that makes it quite frankly extremely weak storytelling and boring. Turning Miquella into a a fanatical Martyr really destroys the ideology of Base Game Miquella who did everything in his power to save the ones that he loved, creating a haven for the outcasts of the world, creating Unalloyed Gold to give relief to Malenia, doing all that he could with the Mausoleums and the Eclipse to try a grant Godwyn a true death. The whole "Miquella abandons everything" plot in the DLC in my opinion is EXTREMELY WEAK storytelling and a massive disservice to Miquella's base game character, and ngl, it only furthers my belief that Fromsoft had absolutely no idea how to handle Miquella's character.

Speaking of Miquella's character: Fromsoft did not need to go absolutely full fucking tilt on Miquella's Bewitching Powers to the point that it is his only goddamn personality.

The thing that pisses me off the most about how Miquella's character is handled in the DLC is that everything about him from the Base Game is literally thrown out the fucking window. The Haligtree, the Albinaurics loyalty to Miquella(i hate you gaius oh how i hate you), his character defining bond with Malenia, his relationship with Godwyn EVERYTHING he did to try and grant his beloved brother a true death, THE ECLIPSE!!!!

It just all means fucking nothing in the DLC. Nothing happens with any of the things that made Miquella so goddamn interesting.

Miquella the Unalloyed, the character that I fell in love with doesn't even exist anymore. He's now been replaced with Miquella the Kind, a character who was specifically crafted to give Miyazaki an excuse to shoehorn radahn into the story and to make it so there is a big-bad final DLC boss so that we kill Miquella so he won't have any large impact on the overall outcome of Elden Rings story.

But honestly that's just it though. That's where the problem with the DLC lies; the fact that Fromsoft had doubled down on their idea that their DLCs should be their own thing and isolated from the rest of the main story.

For a game as large and expansive as Elden Ring and for Miquella who in the base game his presence and importance could be felt nearly everywhere, keeping the DLC isolated was a massive MASSIVE mistake, and it only makes the story presented feel disconnected and unimpactful.

Now do I know anything about game design? No. Do I know anything about how hard it is to make games. Nope but I can imagine.

BUT.

I definitely think that Fromsoft and the DLC would have benefited immensely if it were delayed just a bit longer. I would not have minded in the slightest if the DLC was delayed 3 years. 4 years. IDC. The DLC evidently needed much more time to cook and to actually have been made with love and an understanding of its own lore.

And what's even more frustrating is that there are actually SO many ways they could've made the DLC and Miquella have weight on the story while keeping it mostly isolated from the main game; Just like how the Painter in the Ashes of Ariendel was creating a new world as the old one was burning away. Miquella and his Unalloyed Gold could have created a world where the Outer Gods no longer had any influence, just like how Goldmask and even Ainsbach said: "Create a world for men not the Gods."

Except well, that's honestly kind of impossible seeing how the story forces us to kill the one character who had the power to banish the Gods, and going off with Ranni into the Stars leaves the Lands Between vulnerable for the other Outer Gods to swoop in and lay claim to whatever they want, and also Death Root is still very much a problem, still spreading its cancer all over the Lands Between and even beyond time, meanwhile the story forces us to kill the one person who was trying to grant the cancers source a true death......

😒

And yeah

We never get to meet Miquella even though there is a SHITTON of evidence that he was actually helping us in the base game (see the spirit summoning bell, Torrent in general, cut quest/ending involving miq etc)

Just... Absolutely awful writing and sadly... This is what we got. And what an absolute fucking mess it all is 😔

[melodicdragon97]

Let me start by saying I love the Zelda franchise. I'm a casual gamer, and I haven't beaten every single game in the series (I haven't finished Zelda 2 and I haven't started Oracle of Ages, and I haven't played most of the spinoffs).

When Breath of the Wild came out, it instantly became tied with Twilight Princess as my favorite Zelda game. BotW was a breath of fresh air (pun intended) and I loved how I could play the game at my own pace, and I loved the freedom to explore wherever I wanted from the start. I thought the story was great and the gameplay was unique. The dungeons fell a bit short (they were short and easy, and the bosses kinda sucked), but they were creative, and I loved the champions enough that beating their bosses felt satisfying, if only since it avenged my old friends. Its themes of finally getting closure from the past while helping in the present was handled beautifully, and the final memory brought me to tears.

When Tears of the Kingdom was announced, I was HYPED. I was so excited to see Ganondorf's return and the consequences that would have on the world in this new story. I was wondering how they would handle reusing the same map, especially with the new abilities (Recall was what I was most excited for since it had so much potential to use in puzzles). But the more I saw of TotK regarding its map and game mechanics, the less interested I became.

I thought we would be able to keep the shrines as warp points on the surface (and the focus of the game would be on exploring the Depths and the Sky). Instead, all traces of the BotW's story were lost. No Shiekah tech, no towers, no (Shiekah) shrines. Ok, fine, it's whatever. But that meant you were required to explore the SAME overworld the SAME WAY as you did in BotW: finding dragons tears (finding memories), finding/beating Zonai shrines (finding/beating Sheikah shrines), and finding lookout towers to gain a map of the area (climbing the Shiekah towers). Why? What's the point of all of that in the same overworld, when the focus SHOULD be on making the Depths and Skies interesting instead?

The skies were too segmented and barely had anything in them. The depths were mostly empty aside from enemies and DLC armor from BotW (which makes most of the amiibo useless, btw. Also, THEY GOT RID OF WOLF LINK. I WILL NOT FORGIVE THEM. Lol), and finding the Lightroots as the priority made it tedious to explore. The caves on the surface were so small that they hardly mattered unless you wanted to hunt all the frogs.

I thought the dungeons would be more unique from each other this time around, maybe play on different types of gimmicks or themes. Instead, it's just more of the same gimmick that BotW had: find a few terminals and then beat the boss.

Since TotK is a sequel, I thought its story would be in real time, directly driving the gameplay. Instead, the story takes place forever in the past, and ultimately has no bearing on the plot outside of Zelda's location, AND the exact same story gets replayed after every dungeon you beat. I understood it the first time, thanks.

The ancestors in the past story don't really mean anything to me because they're...nobody. I don't even think they had names. They didn't do anything to make themselves stand out from their descendants, or even have a connection with their descendants aside from being their ancestors. But I digress.

In terms of reusing the world, I thought the old ruins (like the ranch ruins in BotW) would have been rebuilt, or a few new towns would have been added, but INSTEAD it's just the same old world with added monster camps and Lookout Landing and maybe another town that was so forgettable that I don't even remember it.

Ok, so it wasn't what I expected. That doesn't make it bad, right?

Well, I gave it a chance I just really didn't care for the building mechanics. The fusion mechanic is great, but I still feel like I'm cheesing my way through the game instead of actually solving puzzles the way they were intended. I feel like I'm just brute forcing my way through the game, and that doesn't make me feel clever or smart the way older games used to when I'd figure out a unique puzzle.

Oh well. Some games just aren't meant for some people. I still had fun just exploring and messing with Koroks, and I liked that I could have more horses (but they left out the ancient bridle and saddle from the BotW DLC =( )

So now that they've dropped trailers for Echoes of Wisdom, I thought: this is it, they're going to do something different. And we're playing as Zelda!! Zelda has so many cool abilities!!

But instead, the new gimmick in the game is....a rod. That anyone can use. Using Zelda's powers in a game where you play as Zelda? NOPE. Just give her a weapon Link could use, except now we don't have Link's sword/shield or arsenal of other items. We're just a powerless girl with a duplication wand.

Ok, ok, it can't be as bare-bones as that.

The world should be unique and encourage you to explore and navigate the different terrains, right? NOPE, just summon a million beds and climb over everything.

Open world games can be fun, but when you have NO LIMITS then it becomes boring. There's no thought or challenge or maze or puzzles in order to progress; you can easily use the mechanic to build your own solution to every single problem from the start. And building your own solution means relying on knowledge you already have; it doesn't require you to learn how to problem-solve, the way puzzles are meant to. Usually, in this case, I'd WANT to progress in order to see what will happen in the story. But we all know that the Zelda team doesn't gaf about the story, at least not anymore. So what's the point?

Just echo a cucco to fly over gaps, or summon a few objects as a staircase to climb up ledges. Using these echoes in dungeons has the potential to make things fun, but in the overworld? I just don't see the appeal of cheesing your way through every obstacle. And I already had my fill of going wherever I wanted in BotW and TotK. Making the overworld an actual world worth navigating would be NEW at this point.

I feel like EoW should be a short little spinoff game or something. At least then I wouldn't feel so disappointed in a main series game. I'll check it out for the story alone, but if TotK's story is anything to go on, I'm sure EoW's story will be lacking as well.

I'm not dropping out of the fandom just yet. But I feel like they're really cashing in on BotW's success by making every game a worse knockoff of it. They're using playable Zelda as a dirty tactic to win over fans like me who have wanted to play as Zelda with her established abilities.

[alvivaarts]

About Separate Ways (Spoilers)

Wow, guys. I was super excited to get gameplay footage/input from friends about Separate Ways (too broke to own the base game myself) to put into my longfic, but aside from some super cute Luis/Ada moments, I am... dissapointed.

Capcom hire me, at least I can keep the plot consistent because what the actual fuck.

Will discuss below to avoid spoilers (much more story than gameplay, but gameplay wasn't great either), but I'm not going into insane detail save for some things. READERS BE WARNED!

I'm also specifically looking at this through the lens of my own fanfic, Simulation Swarm, which is my take on how Las Plagas works and infected!Leon (in addition, infected!Ashley and a lot of Leon's unacknowledged trauma and relationship issues throughout the game series). I was majorly excited about Separate Ways because it implied that Ada also gets infected- which I really want to still implement even if it changes a LOT of major things about the fic.

I'll go over the good stuff first. AKA, stuff I'm keeping, and not retconning.

1- Luis' characterization was still amazing. It was really nice to see his character balance out Ada's, how he's still as chipper as he can be. Additionally, it's VERY clear how much he cares for Leon and Ashley alike, and he goes out of his way to get Ada the suppressant and still respects her throughout that process. 2- Pesanta/IT/U-3's design with slightly more of a scorpion shape. That was sick! 3- The fact that Ada was aware of most of Leon's movements and a lot of what happened, and in a way was following him around and handling things he couldn't/wasn't aware of. * 4- Ada didn't help Leon into the chair, Ashley did. But that scene isn't even shown. 5- Luis and Ada def had chemistry, and it was so cute!

Well! Short list. Now for the bad stuff. AKA, shit I'm retconning/ignoring/pretending never happened (most of the DLC).

1- Ada's infection is weird as fuck. She got... shot? And infected? And then, infuriatingly (because I've spent WAY too much time thinking about the physiology of Las Plagas and researching w/ the help of others how the infection would work) PUKES UP her plagas?!?!? HELLO!? This in particular drives me insane because like. Las Plagas nests and develops behind the sternum, between the lungs, where it can attach to the nervous system along the spine. It is TOO BIG for a human body to fight against, it's growth shoving lungs out of the way is why people cough up blood. It's nowhere near the throat or stomach and clearly it's extremely well engineered/evolved for human hosts not to end up in conveniently the wrong location. And if she did puke it up, at that point, miraculously, after two days? Her intestines are fucked. She's dying of internal bleeding. I don't fucking care how much of a bad bitch Ada is because at that point Wesker wasn't gonna help her. The fuck? Capcom, know your own lore challenge. 2- We got NO backstory, not even HINTS about Ada's past and origins. Again. 3- * Seriously made Ada's character into a very flat character and removed a lot of the urgency/clear want for her to help Leon from the original DLC. Seriously, she does not gaf about anything but her mission and making it more convenient for herself. Everything she does to help Leon is sheerly coincedence- which, honest to fuck, does not line up. Especially considering she appears to completely lack empathy until... uh oh, Wesker wants to kill a bunch of people? Like sure, she has that BRIEF conversation with Leon in the boat but like... what happened to the people she has history with, the people she could've ABSOLUTELY been saving to spite Wesker and allow her to have her own motives until whoop-de-doo, uh oh, gotta stop a genocide! Be so for real. 4- Bonus: After Luis helped her and she'd made the deal to get him out, he, still dying, calls her with a warning about Krauser. It took a long time for him to die. She SHOWED UP after witnessing the fight and pretty much just... left him. Despite all of that. Which I get from a 'not fucking with canon' standpoint, but seriously. 0 effort. 5- Krauser literally fucking gets away when she fights him???? 6- Wesker keeps making appearances. For some reason. It's not even clear why, he literally just shows up to be intimidating and to threaten Ada into doing the job but like. At that point, honest to fuck, he could've done it himself? Also it was majorly hard to empathize with Ada considering we STILL KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HER OR HER MOTIVATIONS. 7- Luis has no distinct fire trauma. (Okay. Revoking this after the discussion, I just had a no media literacy moment after everything I was taking in. Luis' response was actually pretty good and honestly? Should be appreciated. Though it does bring up another point- while I love Luis, I guess I was walking in with it more being an expectation for it to be 'Ada's Story'. We didn't get that, though the Luis background was great!) 8- Ashley's interaction with Ada was a single line asking for help and Ada just. Walks off.

Anyway, everything I've seen first hand and have discussed with others has left a sour taste in my mouth. Boo, @Capcom. Good thing I can make up my own stupid little stories and pretend that none of that happened.

[shima-draws]

Kieran really does have great characterization so far which is why I really want part 2 of the DLC to really nail the ending! I am sooooooo eager to see how they handle Kieran and Carmine as well as Kieran’s relationship with the two of them in the next part! Also I really hope the game has the three of the them properly make amends with each other for the falling out. My biggest fear is that they’ll put everything on Kieran to fix/not have Carmine (and to a somewhat lesser extent the player) properly apologize for the mishandling of the Ogerpon situation.

YEAH SAME;;

And tbf Carmine did already apologize to Kieran for keeping him in the dark about Ogerpon, she clearly regretted not telling him anything especially bc of how he reacted to it. What I want to see from her is a genuine apology for being a bad sister. Bc she treated Kieran quite poorly at the beginning of the DLC and we can assume she's been treating him that way for a LONG time. Kieran clearly has a lot of self esteem issues and general problems with speaking up for himself, which is possibly a result of years of verbal abuse. I'm not saying Carmine is doing it on purpose; she probably doesn't even realize that her words have such a negative effect on her brother, and she doesn't know that what he's going through is way more than just "teenage angst" as she put it lol. But I think she's starting to find out that maybe she's going about things the wrong way. Especially because Kieran's begun to act out and is more aggressive with his words and actions around her and the player. I really really hope she comes to terms with the fact that yeah, she hasn't really been a good sibling, that maybe Kieran feels like he's been in her shadow this entire time and the way she handled things during the Ogerpon incident made things worse between them. And that she actually feels sorry and wants to make things better 😭

Now, as for whether or not Kieran will ACCEPT that apology from her. We'll have to see :")

[yuseirra]

Been playing episode Aigis lately, (about ten hours in) and here's my honest review on it:

There's a whole lot of grinding.. they really did keep to the original source material. It isn't bad, but the whole structure of this DLC is clear a dungeon->a little snippet of plot->more dungeon->story (on repeat) Oh, I do like how the "doors" have names that are related to Dante's Divine Comedy... it's the one work I always attempt on reading but never make it past Inferno...I'd like to complete reading it one day.

Reload did a pretty good job with adding some extra interactions, thus enhancing the characterization, that part of it isn't totally gone in this DLC either, but there is too little plot compared to the fights. I had fun fighting in Tartarus in the main game, but I find it to be a bit tiring on this one (bet that was even more stronger in the original FES)

The best part about this DLC is Metis for me, she's really pretty and I like her character. It's nice seeing Aigis having a cute sibling who cares about her well-being. The dungeon dialogues are pretty nice too, I think I like that second to Metis, it's good that it's there.

The rest are spoilers regarding the plot~

Another thing I felt about the story is that, it actually may be Akihiko who took the protagonist's loss the hardest besides Yukari and Aigis who are clearly suffering... he used to be very kind and understanding while being pretty righteous, but now he seems to be constantly on edge. I get that coming from him, because he keeps losing all the people he's wanted to protect, it's his third time now. The link ep in Reload really does add to his character if you think of it, I think he thought of the protagonist as his little brother and decided he wanted to watch over him, but that couldn't happen. Mitsuru and Junpei and Ken are seemingly taking it relatively better, I guess. Koro and Fuuka.. they're the quiet type so...There's no wonder why Yukari and Akihiko had the biggest conflict upon how they should handle the keys later in the DLC. They both hold very strong thoughts about how things must be resolved, and it's hard to find a middle ground.

I wish they added more to the story, there were some opportunities like adding a new third-tier persona, or the characters talking more about the protagonist and sharing some thoughts about him. I kind of feel a bit disappointed that they don't address him so much at all, after all those times they spent together.. I see how hard it'd be for them to bring him up, but as a player, you want you to be acknowledged.. We had a bond, guys...!! Moving on and forgetting, being a source of trauma.. that's sad! ;v;) talk about him more, he did so much for you guys!! (and that's where Yukari's whole, "Now everyone needs to realize their own feelings. Think about who he was, and what he meant to us."- comes in - it's there in the the trailer too- that line resonates with me. She does have a warm heart)

Yukari's like the only one who suggests, "We have to go back to save the protagonist from death if there's a chance to!" out of the entire SEES group;; If it weren't for her, I feel like the story would have ended at the spot with everyone agreeing to move on. Even if it's wrong, I feel like she's the one who brought a different perspective to things that's helped lead to a perfect ending. You need a thesis and an antithesis to form a better synthesis and that's what happened.

They seem to have taken out the part where she tries to grab Aigis's key out of desperation in Reload and I honestly didn't like that, because.. if someone's life you love is on the line and if it's your last chance to get them back, it doesn't matter if you're sweet or anything, it's natural to be desperate. I really liked that part of her in the original, she'd do ANYTHING to try and get him back alive. It was the only way to see him alive again, even if it were to be flawed...It felt real and alive. It was something pretty powerful and what's made her my favorite girl out of the series. I was really looking forward to seeing that scene happen again as I bought this DLC and I find it a bit of a bummer after having learned this... o<-<

but Reload Yukari seems to be a much more softer person... a lot less thorns in her, maybe that's what will make her more appeal to more people..she always had that caring side to her too, and it's a crucial trait, she's ultimately a loving person. It's love that makes her do things. If that part of it is intact, it's a bit of a shame on my end but I'll still care for her.

Override was a really good piece of work, it handles what could be episode Aigis if she's the one that's gotten together with the protagonist as well as the female protagonist being there in the story too, I'd like to take that as semi-canon in my head :) Um, I really would like to draw fanarts for it in the future, when I have time and some focus, right now I'm quite distracted with life and other works hehe

anyway, that's it for now! Changed the difficulty to "Peaceful" for this one..; overall, I don't regret having bought the DLC but it's been..tedious. That's my honest feelings towards it. There are some things I appreciate about it, but I think they could have done more with it.. but considering how reload was in the first place, I guess they went with preserving the experience and making minor adjustments overall. It's not a bad remake, it's very true to the original material, but certainly.. warmer and toned down. That can be both positive and negative, and considering the theme of the story, it can have many different effects. I guess it's its own thing on that regard.

[drkineildwicks]

Okay so let’s talk about Palworld

Because I really do gotta talk about it this thing blew up

Apparently the guys who made it were expecting to sell like 300K the first week and ended up selling two million

They’re having to run damage control on the servers because the servers legit cannot handle the traffic

Last time I saw a game look like this it was Temtem on its first days

Because literally everybody underestimated how much game freak ticked off its fanbase

Which brings us to the Donphan in the room

Pokémon VS Palworld

Look we all knew going in that this was going to be a meme factory, whenever we talked about it the game is Pokémon: Gun

But it was also one of those games that popped up when GF started its stunts with dexit, reused assets, releasing half-baked games, etc.

People made fun of it and it’s stayed off the radar until this year, when it released

And yes caution should be exercised because this developer’s other game is still in early access so people are on the lookout for a scam

Not to mention the whole thing about using Pokémon assets, apparently aping Legends’ UI, the AI stuff, NFTs, a ton of other stuff

There’s apparently a whole thread on Twitter comparing and contrasting Pokémon designs with Pal designs and you can easily pick apart where assets were, if not outright stolen, were closely copied

So going in there’s a lot of weighing of pros and cons and some actual moral dilemmas as opposed to the whole fabricated BS of Hogwarts Legacy

Yes it was terrible that Rowling said *checks notes* that biological women exist and that victimized women should be allowed to dictate who is allowed in their safe spaces, these are obviously reasons to cancel somebody please don’t slip on the sarcasm there

But I’ve been watching streams of Palworld and…I want to play it???

You can look at it and 100% name that Pokémon and go okay they got THAT idea from THIS game (watching it I can list BotW, Sunkenland, and a couple others) apparently it’s the Pokémon ripoff version of Once Human

Which also ticks me off because after watching videos of that one I want to play that one too

And originally the big reason for looking more seriously at Palworld is…game freak needs to suffer

They’ve been releasing trash games for years now, the only good Pokémon game as of late is Legends Arceus and do not get me STARTED on the state that ScarVi released in

And then them having the gall to charge the price of a full game for DLC

So in order to play the ‘full game,’ you have to pay for BotW, TotK, and possibly a Mario game on top of it

Ain’t nobody got funds for that

Also the shills

I was telling Mom about all this earlier and when it came to discussing Pokémon games, even comparing them to previous Pokémon games, discussions online go like this anymore: “Well it’s not MADE for you!  It’s for kids!  Go find something else to do and quit picking on the poor multibillion dollar franchise! uwu”

And thus the people who grew up with Pokémon move on to other games, like Nexomon, Temtem, Cassette Beasts, Kindred Fates, Coromon, Palworld, etc.

Shills: “Wait no that’s illegal”

Honestly it’s like the YouTube vs Rumble or Twitter/Tumblr vs Conservative/right-wing websites thing—if you chase them off, what did you think they were going to do?

And then the design thing…a big fat part of me does not feel sorry about that

Because every single other game I listed?  The shills will look at those designs and go “what ripoffs they’re obviously Pokémon but not friend-shaped so ugly!”

So basically anything’s a ripoff, you might as well go full ripoff because the ‘fans’ are going to hate on it anyway

Also if anything even remotely shaped like a Pokémon is a ripoff, then Flamigo angers me even more because that is such a lazy design yes I’m still mad

Most of Gen IX legit looks like they asked an AI to spit out some Pokémon-shaped stuff and called it a day maybe a quarter of the ‘dex is salvageable and that’s being generous

And having spent the past year or so designing ‘mons for the DA group I help mod…three people doing designs have no problem filling a ‘dex out, the most time-consuming part of creating new Pokémon ought to be modeling the thing and once that’s down you’re good

Which means that Pokémon…has honestly asked for Palworld

Because let me tell you something—when I look at this ripoff of a game, this scam game that comes from people who think that NFTs and AI scraping and plagiarism is a good thing, that claims that every Pal that escapes from a ball had parents that never married, and I STILL want to play it over Pokémon?  When the scam game released in a better state than ScarVi?????

Pokémon drove every single customer to Palworld and because of it Palworld deserves every single one of those two million purchases

[kunosoura]

top 5 soulsborne bosses

Honorable mention: Messmer may be recency bias inflated even further because he's one of the few well tuned bosses in the Elden Ring DLC but he absolutely leaped out first to me.

Second Honorable Mention: History may have left the Tower Knight in the dust, but I still have a soft spot for him. Back when the boss design philosophy was less "learn this boss's moveset and execute a counterattack" and more "here's a hectic encounter, how are you going to handle it?"

5. Burnt Ivory King (A ds2 boss? gasp!); for all that when you're 1v1ing him he's a lackluster sword duel with the jank you'd expect of his game, I love how much his fight really embodies the flawed ambitiousness of DS2. You spend the entire DLC recruiting the last of his knights to remain uncorrupted so they can follow you into the old chaos (the flame of Lost Izalith grown so wild and out of control that it's slowly eating the world underneath you), seal away those of them who've grown corrupted, and finally put their king to rest in this sprawling, chaotic brawl. At least when DS2 suffocated you in a boss fight, it did so with a certain ludonarrative ambition.

4. I love the design of the Leda fight where if you've been rushing things or if you do quests stupidly (IE side with the zealous knight of the guy who was literally just recently brainwashing you) it's a hopeless gank but if you've been exploring and engaging with the story it's a 3v3/4v4 (depending on Moore and if you feel justified popping out the mimic tear) where the character arcs of all the people you've met during the DLC campaign really crystallize. Especially Thiollier!

3. I like Margitt! I like how he's both a brick wall meant to chastise you you until you explore the open world and level vigor, and an eminently fair fight once you're savvy to his tricks. A hard obstacle to get you to recognize the new way of navigating the ER world on your first playthrough and a very good warm-up when you're dropping into a new playthrough on a second one.

2. Gael is the best of the like.. super hard DLC capstone bosses. I've played DS3 like 7 times to completion, and each build felt truly pushed to its limits by him without ever feeling like I was being punished for not playing a particular way other than Playing Well. He doesn't invalidate fighting him with sorcery or miracles or pyro with constant undending insufferable aggression with windows too small for anything but a soul arrow (like SOME more recent bosses), but at the same time he doesn't excuses casters from learning the fight.

1. Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower. Absolutely phenomenal boss that brings both the narrative of the main game and of the DLC to a head. The voice/face reveal had me in absolute chills the first time, the way she grabs you by surprise then lets your hand trail away because what comes next can only be a clean duel (reprised later if she gets you with her grab attack and gently cradles your body as she removes the blade... brr). Conspicuously fair, never once do I die to her without knowing what I did wrong, no crazy gimmicks or bullshit phase change health bar refills. The apex of the melodramatic honorable 1v1 duel bosses which as is often memed about, is itself the apex of the soulsborne boss.

[no0t2]

@checkadii

I literally just woke up so this is the worst time to post this but ngl I have this problem where I wanna talk about it but I blank so fucking hard and fall flat on my face that I end up not talking about it anyway out of sheer embarrassment.

I'm not good at structuring my thoughts properly either because of ADHD, but here goes I guess.

I usually gotta segway into the topic if it's relevant to the conversation usually via,, friend convo, I don't know how people do deepdives of characters and whatnot I can't do that. I'm not sure why that is, this always has been a thing for me where I've got some level of understanding and my own HCs and such but they're not written or anything, so I can't express them.

To me Postal is just a silly series (minus P1 and Redux), not to be taken too seriously. So I don't really think about the "lore" that it has so much. I can ramble about Postal: Brain Damaged tho, that's probably my favourite cos of gameplay... And the designs as well as the soundtrack. It's just such a good game, I never thought shooters would ever be a genre I'd like to play, as I was so against playing them (thanks Half-Life for opening up my eyes). I can say definitely with confidence that retro styled FPS are especially something I find fun? Not on intense difficulty or anything either, I usually can't go above normal.

I've listened to "Straight Outta Suburbia" for like over an hour straight, I'm pretty sure even during while I was drawing one of my BD sketches lol

Back to Postal in general, I frankly haven't done enough "research" on it where I can properly speak about it aside from the games I've played (P1, P2, Paradise Lost and P:BD) And they're all games that are super different from each other (aside from P2 and PL, but even then). I'd also say I'm still pretty new to the series, speaking as I haven't played all of the games yet. Frankly, I was planning to just stick to P2 and that's it, glad I didn't.

Postal 1 I remember making me feel all sorts of weird things when I both played it and after I finished it. The load up intro scared the shit out of me the first time I opened the game, to where I had to pause for a minute. And it kept spooking me each time I did open it. I think that was kinda the point of the game as it's pretty dark compared to it's counterparts. I won't get into the lore of the 1st Dude cos I've seen people pluck at each other's feathers over the interpretation of him. But essentially, guy looses his shit during an episode, starts killing everyone. (Or just, "hostiles", depends how you play the game.)

P2 is so wildly different (aside from the fact that you can shoot people) that when I first opened it I was so confused how I was met with THAT Dude. I was surprised to hear him talk more beyond than just "BLEED" or "Only my weapon understands me". At the time I was also wrangling personal fears and feelings(which I don't know if I wanna get into, let alone if people would even wanna hear it lol) over playing the Postal series, so my initial expectation towards the game was:

"Okay, I know this is going to have some offensive shit in it, there's parts that won't be fun probably." And hoped for the worst, surprisingly a lot of the stuff in it I didn't find that bad, most of it is definitely fucked up, but nothing I couldn't handle, surprisingly. I played neutral-y, so I only attacked whoever attacked me, but I'd bail if I had the chance.

Paradise Lost plays similarly to Postal 2 (as it's literally the same branch of game just in the form of DLC). But I've found myself enjoying it way more than Postal 2, mostly cuz I found some of the jokes in it actually funny.

P3 I haven't played because I got rick rolled by RWS on the website so I'm not gonna play it out of spite </33 (But I've seen gameplay)

Postal: Brain Damaged is like, even more different than the previous entries as it's a retro styled shooter. But it has the charm of a Postal game and MAN is it good, I think the fact that it was released more recently is what made me enjoy its humor more. And it just!! Is so fun in general like wow, I'm still processing playing the game and I've already been thinking of replaying it because of how much I've enjoyed it. Definitely recommend trying it out.

AND WOWWW this has gotten long oops. Sorry.

I wanna note tho that, although there are aspects of Postal I enjoy, there's a lot of them that I don't, namely the offensive bits, some of them are genuinely fucked up where I can't go past them even in a comedic sense. Which I think is OK. I still enjoy other parts of it :^]

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-04-01

Boopin' Monday

Listening: Sometimes you go a while without listening to a performer well understood to be solidly good and you forget that they're solidly good and then you listen to them and you're like yeah this is good. Daft Punk's Human After All album.

A positively wet album.

Reading: Finished Glory In The Thunder, by 0xabad1dea. A very strange book to read, like, it's a peculiar mix of extremely by the book fantasy and the peculiar "teen queer perfusion" style that 0xabad1dea was aiming for. A lot of plotlines but very well plotted, they weave in and out very neatly and intersect at the right times. It's a satisfying book to read but also I get the feeling that 0xabad1dea is having more fun writing it than I could ever have reading it.

If nothing else I should understand more of her posts now, since many of them are notebook sketches of these characters. I'll get to the sequel another time but I'm busy digging through my book list for what to read next.

Watching: Not much! A lot of short web stuff most notably the new Antimemetics Division short film, which has part 2 coming out in a couple days! Exciting stuff.

Playing: Forza Horizon 5, the Audi Quattro Rally S1 is up as a reward this month and I was like hey I want one of those, although I ended up scoring one through the rally DLC quests. I did wrap up the rally DLC storylines though so I'm caught back up with all the big quests, still haven't finished a ton of the ones that came out since I kind of stopped playing it as much as I used to because I was wasting a lot of my time in that game. It's too easy to get sucked into just cruising between races idly for hours.

Making: Started poking at LÖVR in detail, started writing a boids simulation but I fell down the rabbit hole of locomotion methods in VR, dealing with the dual coordinate spaces of the headset position in space and the virtual space positioning transforms is a little daunting, I expect I'll have to write some helpers to simplify it. Slowly relearning how Lua works.

Also sat and sanded the NAS case, I was planning on painting it this weekend but I was a little sick so that is on hold until probably Friday when the workshop opens again. Also need to go finish signing up for a library card so I can use the library system's shared workshop for smaller things, it looks cool.

Tools and Equipment: I have been responsible for rescuing a dying storage server at work, and I would like to pitch mdadm. If you're still using hardware RAID, stop that. It is a bad idea. You are setting yourself up for problems. CPU's are fast enough now that software RAID is perfectly performant and it makes sure that you don't end up in the situation where something silently goes wrong with your RAID card and you don't realize that your data has turned into giblets.

mdadm is actually really nice when you aren't dealing with inscrutable bugs that I see because I'm in the bugfixing division. Very simple to manage, good documentation, comprehensible metaphors, handles itself when possible, and has several sets of instructions that are basically guaranteed not to break anything that was no already broken, which is handy if you are dealing with an already fragile system.

[queen-scribbles]

*crawls out of the woodwork* hi hi! Just wanted to say your vesper x kurt fics are amazing and thank you for sharing content. Have been back to this Fandom in the year of our lord 2024 lol. And I just wanted to scream about the de vespe DLC with a kurt fan and....

*swoons*

It's everything I hope for and more!! Would love to hear about your initial thoughts especially the dialog with kurt!

HI! Always nice to meet another Kurt fan! :D You're very welcome for sharing content, thank you for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed them bc I do love writing about them.

OH LORD, the de Vespe DLC, I was excited for more content when that came out and it delivered. Especially for Kurt and his romance, holy cow. (In other words I WOULD LOVE TO TALK ABOUT IT THANKS FOR GIVING ME AN EXCUSE) I have multiple posts from various playthroughs in my Greedfall gaming tag about the Kurt stuff, from how protective and supportive he is, to him being all "Don't believe the nonsense in Aurelia's files on us" when his is just that he cares too much about the recruits and is too loyal to be bribed and I'm just like. Dude. I knew these things already. Neither one is nonsense, sorry I know you're actually a gigantic softie, in my defense you DIDN'T HIDE IT VERY WELL but his romance dialogue

HOLY

SHIT

I also have several posts joking about Kurt's VA owing me compensation for emotional damage with how well he does a lot of personal quest/romance scenes, but the KURT ROMANCE DIALOGUE IN THE DLC OH MY GODDDDDD. OH MY GOD. I have a save right before that conversation and I redid it about five times on the initial run, at least three on each replay, and will occasionally load that save JUST TO HEAR IT AGAIN bc it's so GOOD. He worries about you but knows you can handle yourself, no what's bugging him(and I love that DS is so gentle about the "you know you can talk to me right?") is the arranged marriage thing bc OFC you deserve "better"(/eyeroll) and he's being all doubting his worth again and YOU CAN ASK HIM TO MARRY YOU (THE WAY I WHOOPED first time through, seeing that option) before your uncle can go arranging anything and HIS VOICE. That quiet little "do you really mean what you just said?" is permanently etched into my brain partly bc I've heard eighteen times but whatever. He can't believe it, he has to be dreaming, and then you confirm and his only hesitation is worrying what will happen to you(bc he doesn't matter, he's an insignificant mercenary and Kurt buddy you MATTER TO HER we gotta work on that). And I gotta say that I love your response boiling down to "what's my uncle gonna do about it, he's halfway around the world and he needs me here😎" BAD.ASS. And once he's sure you're sure he's 100% in favor and you exchange I love yous and I melted into an extremely happy puddle.

(I did write a Ves/Kurt wedding fic and it's one of the most breathlessly joyful pieces I've made in my life, both of them were practically vibrating they were so happy)

[heat--end]

beat the scarlet/violet DLC! i havent done some of the bigger postgame stuff yet, but ive beaten the main story, which is really the important part

ill leave my longer thoughts under the read more to avoid spoilers

honestly, i really like how they handled this DLC. i think part of me likes kitakami as a place more, but this is also a really nice little spot. the terarium is a cool place, the pokemon in it are cool, etc.

what i REALLY liked was the story, as well. ive talked about this with a lot of other people, but SV's main theme seems to be getting yourself too lost in your own desires, so much so that you don't realize what happens, and this continues that. ambition is a great thing, but pushed too far, it can put others at risk. i think kieran's character is fantastic in this regard. it genuinely makes sense, and it's no surprise he ends up the way he does, and his desire to look up to the player becomes warped and corrupted because he wants to be better, he wants to achieve the dreams he's seeing the player reach, etc.

it's really interesting stuff. i really, REALLY like it, honestly, and i love how they handled briar in the way, too. briar literally gets so invested and excited about terastialization research that she's putting *three children* at risk. she actively realizes this and apologizes, and i like that they highlighted this. it's a neat theme, and i think the DLC tackles it really well

like the lore and extra stuff introduced is cool, but i feel like always, the character writing shines really well here. it's nice to see a bit of old kieran peek back out, him falling into old habits, but then we see him lose himself again as SOON as a sliver of a chance for him to be better than the MC arrives. for that, i'm a huge fan, i think they did a really good job there

also, big fan of BBQs. scratches that "i want to do PLA tasks forever" itch just enough to be satisfying

the one thing i wasn't a fan of was the battle difficulty, however. now, keep in mind, after asking my friends for some help i WAS able to adjust my team and have strategies to beat them and all that, but MAN, this is WAY too drastic of a leap in difficulty compared to base game, IMO. it'd be one thing if this was optional, but this is the main story.

now, keep in mind, i don't mind if they want to make pokemon games harder. i think it's a good thing. challenge and all that. but when base SV wasnt... ANYTHING like this, it is VERY jarring for them to like, legitimately start using competitive movesets and strategies and all that, without so much as a means to prepare you for it. i feel like there's gonna be a lot of people who just get hard walled by some of the battles, and idk how i really feel about it.

i AM glad this is here, but, i don't think it shouldve been the DEFAULT. some kind of toggle or even having these be post-game battles wouldve been great. but having it be the main difficulty scaling feels really bizarre in comparison to SV's base difficulty. hell, kitakami wasn't nearly as bad as this. it's a leap that is very, VERY drastic.

(and yeah, i did get fucked up bad early on, but keep in mind this is coming from someone who first tried kieran, who is the hardest battle in the DLC. so it's not like i was just playing poorly all the time)

also stellar as a tera type is kinda just whatever i feel. idk not really as interesting as it seemed to be. it's cool lore wise, but even then it's just like... eh, neat, i guess LOL

all in all, i really liked indigo disk. it wasn't the most mindblowing thing ever, and i feel like i MAYBE liked teal mask more, but honestly, it's not by a huge margin. it was pretty good, i had a good time. i'd say it won't win over anybody who already didnt like base SV, but it's worth if you like the base game because it improves on a lot. honestly, i think i like the DLC more than i do the base game, and i already liked SV, lmao

[rv2xlga]

another rant: my tumblr era has started i feel withdrawals…

i might not finish this so if it gets posted. something won but drawing most definitely did not ToT anywho this is in fact another persona rant! im fixated on kingdom hearts pretty heavily now but i still hold persona very very dear to me as we now dhskd im here to rant about the aigis and yukari, this wont be as in depth as last rant but hey its worth a try and its been on my mind why not

thinking about aigis’ character and everything about her character down to her bisexuality really makes me wish they explored her humanity more. i know she wasn’t an allegory really or anything of that sort just more of a “plot device” of sorts to help handle the theme of appreciating your humanity and living and all that. but i love her so much so yes, as indulgent as it is, i want to explore that for her hehe. since i played the game and my fixation and love for aigis had commenced, ive always sorta shipped her with yukari i guess? because i think they would really nice together lmao and also because i think there’s so much potential between a dynamic like that between the two of them.

i was working on a fanfic idea and i had written some stuff i really liked but in short the idea was about aigis and yukari and how their relationship would develop during the answer time or after the events of the main game basically and how they would deal with makoto’s death in a rather odd manner to say. mind you, ive never seen the answer dlc and knew very little about it so i sort of didn’t include that specific time but anywho, no matter all that, the point of in short is that aigis and yukari only really find that sort of sense of “love” in each other because they both remind each other of makoto. i know that sounds probably insane and i don’t really like writing about gay couples and just focusing it so much on societal standards or like in sapphic relationships for example, i don’t like the fact so many are based around men and comphet and all that but i feel that this would be such an issue for how aigis and yukari would navigate their lives afterwards, as of course it would be, i think it has a lot of potential to be discussed and i know atlus would never state it the way that i think it would look but just in the friends way and not in the jealous “he was mine!!” way, its so ridiculous bc again, i havent seen it myself but i know its handled so horribly i dont even wanna imagine. ill see it eventually ToT

but anywho, i think their relationship has a lot of potential to be explored. just the ship dynamic in general and aigis having to handle teen emotions lmao. i think her being extremely awkward and learning the concept of embarrassment would be hilarious i mean mostly tragic but in a way, it’s something that could speak to a lot of people. and i know the game didn’t have time to really explore that and i think surprisingly they did pretty well with what they did with aigis and just that game in general (the first and last time lmao) but im just saying whatever yk fhsjfb

i just wish more media expanded on what toxic relationships genuinely are. i wish more ppl thought critically and realized the very thin but visible line between toxic and abusive and didn’t either glorify or exaggerate it so much yk? like i wish more media discussed mutually toxic relationships and actually didn’t put such a disgusting narrative like they always do especially with gay women and sapphic couples. just for the fetish it’s absolutely disgusting just like with gay men and the power dynamics its like… why. why are we missing the point here how do we manage to make the same mistakes everytime ToT i like aigis and yukari as a ship because its something that already in itself is a bit questionable to say the least and it could really feed off well on that differentiation between their humanity you know? and also handling grief but realizing that its the same and they both need to let go you know? it’s like even with yukari and mitsuru, i wish more people didn’t treat them like “aww cute gay girl couple from persona 3!! yass lesbians diversity win!!” and actually thought on the WAY bigger picture that their relationship is and just how messy and complicated and tbh, really unfortunate it would be. although i do think that mitsuru and yukari would probably “be together” late in the future like probably reconnect late 20s or smth but it would all have to be secret and still, mitsuru would never be able to really be with her due to the company and marrying off and all that. and just with mitsuru’s avoidant personalty and a bit of nativity and i personally headcanon yukari with bpd or just a more emotionally based personality disorder so those leading factors would probably make their relationship to actually come to fruition so difficult

ok i was going to finish this and ill still post it but my head hurts so bad rn i hate playing kingdom hearts the graphics are miserable omg.. so ima head to sleep at only 3 am like a loser.. goodnight to the dust under the bed and alsoooo

goodnight too to the inspo for today’s rant.. i was finally able to get my hands on a baby aigis and she has arrived and im so happy i feel like a father right now… even the box has naorise tooo like fjskfjr♪٩(๑>ꇴ< ๑)و ♪ …you all better say goodnight to my child im looking at you too dust bunnies dont think i forgot

[dilfgmancoolatta]

Hi I have seen you post about Fallout a lot and I really want to get into it because it seems to be my type of story. But I am scared because everyone talks about how most of the series is bad so if I were to get into it how would I go about that?

Ok first off, do not listen to people saying most games are bad, those are New Vegas fanboys who refuse to admit that anything about the Bethesda fallouts are good.

2nd, there’s multiple ways to get into it. Fallout has overarching lore but not a connecting story (except maybe the first two, and that’s a stretch) You could start, like I did, with Fallout 4 as it has more modernized controls and gameplay, it contains some references to fallout 3 but not so many that you feel lost. You could also start with the first of the 3D fallouts, Fallout 3. Or start at the beginning with the isometric fallouts, 1 & 2, though I don’t recommend this cause it’s pretty difficult to get a handle of without a guide. You could also start with New Vegas but honestly, despite what I said about New Vegas fans, it is my favorite game as well so your expectations might be set a little too high

3rd, 76 is not that bad, especially nowadays. It’s different from the other fallouts, being a MMO, but it’s genuinely a good entry into the series, I just wouldn’t recommend it being your first

Also lastly, play the DLC. Every DLC aside from 3’s Mothership Zeta is canon, and they’re so good