“I Just Think They're Neat.” Like What You are Playing

[Kazin]

Alliance Alive: HD Remastered is absolutely excellent. I'm just shy of ten hours in, and the game just opened up considerably - I can apparently go wherever I want now and have nine characters to play with building. I love the battle system - it's fast, fun, and you can quickly build a good team, though the really tough monsters are still difficult (many random overworld battles are stupid easy, but go into a Water Monster den and prepare for Game Overs lol). Right now it feels like I get Talent points sliiightly too slowly, but I'm sure that will change as I get farther into the game, and it doesn't matter all that much anyway since sparking new Talents works pretty well when you shuffle your formations and weapons around. And now, my weapons will all be repaired if I stay at an Inn anywhere in the world, which means I can much more freely use my final attacks that break my weapons! Cannot wait for work to be over to dig in more!

 

[WildcatJF]

It's a really good game, glad you're enjoying it!

 

[Kazin]

Just hit the credits on Alliance Alive HD Remastered. I didn't want it to end, but I was having trouble finding more recruits for the guilds. I suppose I could have destroyed the last few water monster lairs, but I couldn't find any guildmasters, so that seemed like busywork. In any case - absolutely fantastic game. Very well put together. So good, I think eventually I'm going to give Legend of Legacy another shot! I don't remember why I didn't like it when I first tried it.

 

[Peklo]

They're really not very similar games in design style and goals despite the shared aspects. I love The Legend of Legacy and am pretty indifferent to The Alliance Alive, and the opposite experience is well represented too.

 

[estragon]

The biggest similarity is probably the battle system, but outside that they're definitely very different games. I loved TLoL and though TAA was good enough but less interesting, clearly shooting for a more mainstream JRPG audience that it unfortunately never found. Even if it wasn't what I wanted, I do wish TAA was a huge success just so I'd have a shot at getting another TLoL type game, but now it seems like that whole team/project is just not a thing anymore.

The director of both (Matsuura Masataka) appears to have not made any public statements or been publicly associated with any projects since 2017 after a long time as a major face at FuRyu, so I worry these two games in a row ended his career, which would be really unfortunate. I hope he gets a shot at another project someday.

Just hit the credits on Alliance Alive HD Remastered. I didn't want it to end, but I was having trouble finding more recruits for the guilds.

If I remember correctly, it's set up so that some of them won't reach maximum. (Maybe something changes on NG+ that lets you max out everything? I looked into it at the time but forget.)

 

[ArugulaZ]

I've got a bunch of emulators on my Xbox Series S, and life is good. Apparently granting users dev access for $19 was done to curb piracy (after all, why break into a house if the front door's already open?), but it's had the delightful side effect of bringing a ton of emulators to the system, with or without dev access. It's great because it's turned my Series S into one stop shopping for entertainment... I can watch an episode of Let's Make a Deal on Amazon Prime, then switch over to a few matches of KOF XV, then play some Bloody Roar: Primal Fury on a GameCube emulator, then spend the rest of the night playing VIC-20 games, which look like they were programmed by Fred Flintstone but are nevertheless good for the soul of a guy who owned that prehistoric computer back in 1982.

I just realized! I can get that Apple IIe multi cart and play all of THOSE games, too! This Xbox Series S is getting better and better as an entertainment investment.

 

[Olli]

Lair of the Clockwork God was really fun. It's pretty breezy to beat, outside of some elaborate point-and-click puzzle sections that are easy to solve with a bit of googling. I got the most enjoyment from the fourth-wall-breaking game design and commentary.

 

[Paul le Fou]

As I mentioned elsewhere, Astro's Playroom is better than it has any right to be. It's fun, cute, and breezy and I'm really enjoying my time with it.

 

[nataeryn]

Astro's Playroom I agree was fun and cute. As someone who has had experience with the whole history of Playstation consoles, it was fun to find the references to all the games.

I think I'm done with Pokemon Crystal I've had fun going back to the series using a nuzlocke lite approach, simply to limit my options and avoid analysis paralysis and grinding. I beat the Elite Four with Feraligator, Arcanine, Sudowoodo, Polywrath, Butterfree, and Sandslash. Most of those got picked up pretty early in the run. I took my champions an a rampage through Kanto, I did take a slight detour after picking up the TM for Zap Cannon. I got a Voltorb via trade from one of the NPCs so it leveled up fast and used that to knock a couple of water types off against Misty. I also snagged the Snorlax.
I was impressed with how open Crystal is. I accidentally skipped Sprout tower, Dark Cave, Ruins of Alph, Whirl Islands, and most of Mt. Mortar. I went without Fly too.

 

[Tato]

Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection arrived today. I'm still annoyed that they announced a digital release only AFTER collecting orders for the physical one (and claiming the only way to get all the titles in one collection was the physical release). One of these days I'm going to stop falling for that crap.
The collection itself seems really cool so far. There's the standard emulation and size options, as well as rewind/fast-forward/save states. There are tons of illustration/box/manual scans for all the titles to look through. One of the coolest things is that the games have maps for each stage that have been put together, even marking where secrets are hidden.

 

[ThricebornPhoenix]

A bit late to the party here, but Halo 3: ODST is pretty cool, actually.

The only bad thing about it is that I will live forever with a burning need for a game that's pretty much the same, except with Grunts as the protagonists.

 

[Issun]

Fall Guys is the online multiplayer game for people who hate online multiplayer games. Like me.

 

[Kazin]

With the MemCard Pro GC coming out soon, I decided to play some Gamecube in anticipation, considering my dad gave me an old plasma TV he didn't need anymore that the ol' GCN looks great on with my GCVideo HDMI little plug thing. Booted up Pikmin last night, and played it all day today, beating it for my first time ever. I'd tried to get into it several times over the years, but it never clicked, I'm not really sure why. I had a great time today, though, final boss aside (I feel terrible that I had to sacrifice like 200 Pikmin to that jerk to get a nonessential item lol). Booted up Pikmin 2, and it's like the game was designed to delight me specifically:

Aside from straight up fanservice for me, there being no time limit means I can really sit back and enjoy the second game. I was worried the final level - having never seen it before today - was going to take me multiple days to complete, and while it did, it only took me 2, so I had three days to spare, thankfully. Good stuff!

 

[karzac]

Pikmin is an all time great.

 

[jpfriction]

I prefer the first one to the second. The time limit adds a little bit of challenge and helps me focus. The second felt a little too easy and long in the tooth. Third one was probably my favorite overall, though, I need to play through that again.

 

[karzac]

+1 to the original being better than 2.

 

[Kazin]

Some of these caves in the second one are pretty challenging, though - I did an eight floor cave that wiped out half my Pikmin. Though I suppose replacing them all wouldn't be too difficult and would just take a day or two of grinding out new ones. Still, it's a good time, even if it does end up being too easy (though I didn't find the first one too difficult, final boss aside).

 

[Kazin]

I can see why people prefer the first game to Pikmin 2. Some of the later cave stages are ridiculous, and though I enjoy the challenge (and the game overall), they can be unfair, which I wouldn't call pretty much anything in the first game (those monsters that spit rolling rocks still being able to control the rocks after their death infuriated me lol). I rolled the credits after getting 10,000 pokos last night, though I intend on getting everything in the game if I can, so I'm not moving on to Pikmin 3 yet. I still have like 80 treasures to get, which is a lot considering I've already played the game at a languid 12 hours.

 

[Kazin]

100%ed Pikmin 2. I think I probably prefer the first game, too, though I really enjoyed 2. I wish the caves were less long and that either there were more of them or more overworld levels. Still, the final boss is incredible (if extremely confusing to figure out how to fight it at first). I probably spent 20 minutes on him when I finally did beat him. He seemed, for the most part, fair, which is not the case for the first game's boss.

Super weird that there's not a single instance of making yellow Pikmin throw bombs in the second game, despite bomb rocks being useable by enemies.

 

[YangusKhan]

I played through the demo for Sea of Stars yesterday and I was pretty impressed. For a lot of indie JRPGs, I typically go in with the expectation that the other shoe will drop at any moment; that there's always going to be an aspect of the game that's clearly weaker than the rest of it. Of course, the caveat with a demo is that it's a very thin slice of a larger game, so you truly never know for sure how representative it is of the rest of the game. But the strengths I saw in this demo were all great. One of the biggest sticking points for me and indie RPGs is the writing; I cannot stand certain types of "humor" that tend to show up in their writing, which so often tends to be pointless 4th wall breaking or lamp shading of genre tropes. What I found here was just a genuine attempt at being humorous and amusing without all that baggage. I haven't talked about the gameplay yet because all I really need to say is that it combines a few things from other well-respected RPGs, and it combines them in a way that feels meaningful rather than just using them for their own sake. Definitely give it a try if you're mildly interested.

 

[Peklo]

It has come up before, but anyone thinking of trying Sea of Stars should be aware that it's a game by Sabotage Studio, makers of The Messenger, from which a transphobic joke was patched out upon the devs receiving feedback and a performative apology was given, but which also contains long, played-up tributes to Jordan Peterson... which are actually completely sincere, as the studio's writer and other staff (I assume it's just a couple of people total, so maybe all) admire him and want to promote his beliefs.

 

[YangusKhan]

According to their website, the team is fairly large. Also curious that no one on that page is credited as a writer. Not sure what to make of that.

 

[estragon]

According to their website, the team is fairly large. Also curious that no one on that page is credited as a writer. Not sure what to make of that.

This is kind of funny because when they were criticized for a joke riffing on "did you just assume my gender?" in The Messenger, they did apologize and remove the joke (unlike the Peterson stuff, which stayed in because it's kind of hidden and no one with a big platform pointed it out), but their response was like, "It's a really complicated and inexplicable accident that this was even in there in the first place." So maybe they just have a recurring problem where they have no control over what what is written into their game, like there's some supernatural force just inserting writing into their games beyond their control.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1031842450413735936

My guess would be that they won't do that kind of thing in this game, just from an avoiding controversy perspective, given that they backed down on the parts that were directly criticized last time. I think that basically the people who founded and run Sabotage Studio appear to be assholes, but assholes who want to release a noncontroversial game that sells a lot to a broad audience and seem to have stopped acting like this in public. How charitably you want to read that change in behavior is a judgement call. The response embedded above never sat right with me though, so personally I'm not inclined to read it very charitably.

 

[Violentvixen]

As a side discussion I'm curious to poll everyone: what would have been the better response here that would fix this?

Because to me patching the joke out of the game and apologizing seems like a great response, and I read their apology as sincere and not wanting to distract from the issue at hand by making excuses. I feel like something is going over my head here and want to understand, because dislike of The Messenger has come up here before and every time we have this discussion I feel like I'm missing something.

And please don't just say "don't put the joke in the game in the first place".

 

[Issun]

As a side discussion I'm curious to poll everyone: what would have been the better response here that would fix this?

Because to me patching the joke out of the game and apologizing seems like a great response, and I read their apology as sincere and not wanting to distract from the issue at hand by making excuses. I feel like something is going over my head here and want to understand, because dislike of The Messenger has come up here before and every time we have this discussion I feel like I'm missing something.

How familiar are you with one Jordan B. Peterson?

 

[Violentvixen]

How familiar are you with one Jordan B. Peterson?

None but it doesn't sound like that's the issue here? Or is that the bigger issue than this line and that's what I'm misunderstanding?

 

[Issun]

At least some of the devs are big fans of his, and Peterson's rise to fame was as a Toronto professor who absolutely refused to correctly gender students. There's way more than that to the odyssey of JP, but that is the most immediately relevant to how seriously we might take the studio's apology.

Obviously they're not at J.K. Rowling levels of overt transphobia, but it's something to keep in mind when deciding whether to consume their content.

 

[Violentvixen]

Got it, thanks. I have a lot of trouble interpreting associations like that sometimes. So it's more that based on their lack of distancing themselves from this guy people are less likely to believe the apology?

 

[estragon]

(1) I think the "we can't explain how it get in there" response is fairly obviously an insincere lie. Dialogue doesn't just accidentally show up in your video game. Someone had to write it, and many other people had to read it. Why was this there in the first place, and why are they pretending that it was all a big mistake? It wasn't lorem ipsum default text. Someone wrote that, on a very small team. The credited Writer for the messenger is Thierry Boulanger, who is also the game Director and President and Creative Director of the studio.

(2) They left the Jordan Peterson admiration stuff in the game. He's also a very outspoken transphobe and misogynist. It's not just that they not distancing themselves, but that they're big fans of him.

I think an adequate response would be to (1) be honest about how it got in there and not pretend that the game wrote itself and (2) also remove the praise for the guy famous for hating trans people from the game, which I would argue is a bigger red flag than what they took out. There are trans people who do make "did you assume my gender" type jokes. I think that's a matter of context and a sense of humor. On its own, it could be a harmless joke that didn't land. Combined with praise for a famous transphobe that's still in the game, I think it's hard to see this as something addressed within the game itself. They removed the easy to find joke that got them bad press, but kept in their love of a virulent anti-trans crusader that fewer players stumble across.

Beyond whether or not it's fixed in that single game, I also just don't see how this happens unless the studio culture is fundamentally rotten, and Sea of Stars is another game directed by Sabotage Studio President and Creative Director Thierry Boulanger.

 

[Mogri]

Someone had to write it, and many other people had to read it.

This is less true than you might suppose in a smaller studio. Doesn't excuse the rest, obviously.