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The Return Of The "Not Worth Its Own Thread" Thread

Becksworth

Becksworth

Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
I guess Steam managing Dolphin updates might be desirable to some (though maybe not if you're running potato hardware and newer build don't work as well for you).

But yeah, I think people wanted Dolphin on Steam less in order to download it from there and more because they wanted Valve's tacit approval of Dolphin.
 
John

John

(he/him)
Sarge said:
I'm hoping the Dolphin devs will take this opportunity to get all that sorted out and legal as it should be. I don't see any real advantage to being on Steam, though - you're still going to need to jump through most of the same hoops as downloading directly, not to mention setting up ISOs and whatnot.
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It’s a little easier to set up Steam Deck configs if they’re loaded from the store vs side loaded, but you’re still going to have to side load the ISOs.

Edit: lol, everyone else had the same idea
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Even without using EmuDeck, it's super easy to install from the Discover store.
 
Beowulf

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
John said:
That's quite a run. I remember in the late 90's/early 00's I would follow the SMS Power ROM preserving efforts, and long after they had exhausted everything from NA/JP, they kept releasing Brazilian variants, prototypes, and wholly unique games.
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This is amazingly similar to the Famiclone market in China.
 
ArugulaZ

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
No no no, Brazilian Mega Drive games go way beyond mere bootlegs. There are homebrew ports of 16-bit arcade games, and the designers are really swinging for the fences with these.


 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I love Etsy:

wall.jpg


This is something I've wanted for years. All these wireless controllers just laying around bugs me because I forget where I put them, I'm afraid I'll sit on them, etc. Now I know exactly where they all are and they're out of the way, freeing up (some) shelf space.

(yes, I know my shelf there is a mess, the whole room is a work in progress)

Etsy seller is here, btw.
 
estragon

estragon

wasn't paying attention to ubisoft, but the recently announced prince of persia game actually looks like it could be a really cool search-action style game with really interesting traversal and combat mechanics???


definitely want to see how the reviews turn out for this one
 
Violentvixen

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
This is stunning. I'm not getting (the Zelda rupee thing is a bit much) but holy shit this is just so technically impressive.

 
FelixSH

FelixSH

(He/Him)
Just gave FF XIII-2 a try. No idea if there was a patch between 2019 and now, or what, but back then, I didn't play it, because the performance was unbearable. It was more a diashow, when there were many characters and monsters on screen at the same time.

The framerate still visibly drops, but it's good enough for me, still very playable. Which is great, because it means I can now finally play a new FF, and learn more about the world of FF XIII. And I can give Lightning Returns a try, which always sounded really interesting to me. Yay!
 
Kirin

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Huh. I think I played XIII-2 near release and don’t remember being annoyed by the performance. Possible I’m just very forgiving though.

The plot of that game is a heck of a hot mess, but it embraces its excesses and somehow kinda works. Mechanics wise I really dug its refinement of XIII’s systems and got way into it, raising up lots of monsters and fighting postgame nonsense and everything. Come to think of it, I think it was one of the first FFs to have significant DLC (though mostly just new things to fight in an arena) so I guess it is possible they slipped in some performance updates as well.
 
Rascally Badger

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
Does anyone know how the PS4 version of Pillars of Eternity 2 is? Also, what all gets carried over from the first game (I can look that one up after work). I beat the first game a couple of years ago, but I doubt my laptop can handle the sequel and I wonder if it matters if I am leaving behind stuff from my first playthrough.
 
JBear

JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
Rascally Badger said:
Does anyone know how the PS4 version of Pillars of Eternity 2 is? Also, what all gets carried over from the first game (I can look that one up after work). I beat the first game a couple of years ago, but I doubt my laptop can handle the sequel and I wonder if it matters if I am leaving behind stuff from my first playthrough.
Click to expand...
I can't answer the first question, but I recently started PoE2 and can tell you that what it carries over is all of your decisions, from the major ones to the minor ones, and possibly also two weapons (I'm not sure if I did anything special or if they're just there by default, but the broken remains of two major weapons from the first game were in my ship's cabin at the start, and they *feel* like import bonuses). That said, it also has an import tool where you can build those decisions if you feel like you remember them well enough.

Oh, also, FWIW, I feel like this one isn't very resource-intensive; the machine I'm playing it on now is certainly not new (I'm about to replace it since Steam is ending support for Windows 8).
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
It's apparently improved from its original state, but has very long load times. If you're playing on PS5 or a PS4/Pro with SSD, it would make it better I'm sure. Reviews are all over the place about how bad the technical issues were, and I haven't put enough time into either version to really say anything definitively.

I think CPU-wise they don't really recommend anything higher, but it definitely wants a beefier GPU, GTX 570 for the original vs. GTX 960 for the sequel. My older laptop struggled at times with the first game, so I knew it would handle PoE2. I have another older machine that seems to run it decently (from the bit I played), i5-2310 and an RX560.
 
FelixSH

FelixSH

(He/Him)
I'm watching an LP of FF VII: Dirge of Cerberus. This doesn't look like a good game, but I like whenever Cait Sith is on screen.
 
Bongo

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
I'm losing my marbles thinking about this Kemco RPG bundle on Xbox. Hell no I'm not going to get it, but it's got a certain enormity that compels attention. Fifty complete, real games from the past decade or so, pumped out at a rapid cadence for mobile-first release, and now gathered into a single transaction. They had to have been made cheaply to make so many, and they sure look it.

You'll never find me saying that a low-to-no-budget potboiler can't be good, and in a beloved genre, just going through the motions can satisfy. But nothing about this makes me confident in the product. Suppose that one of these Kemco RPGs managed to hit the jackpot. How could you possibly tell? It would be a hidden gem, but hidden by being outwardly indistinguishable from the dross. Just like the others, the title would still be unmemorable, the art derivative, the translation stiff, and only cursory reviews of it would be written.

Still, quantity has a quality all its own. Let's run some numbers. According to the Guybrush Threepwood principle, at the current $200 point, it'd need to contain just five games worth the time it takes to boot them up in order to avoid being dismissed out of hand. That's just one in ten. Do you think Kemco is batting .100? I doubt it, but when I put it that way it doesn't seem implausible.
 
Beowulf

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Bongo said:
Still, quantity has a quality all its own. Let's run some numbers. According to the Guybrush Threepwood principle, at the current $200 point, it'd need to contain just five games worth the time it takes to boot them up in order to avoid being dismissed out of hand. That's just one in ten. Do you think Kemco is batting .100? I doubt it, but when I put it that way it doesn't seem implausible.
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So, I've probably play 20+ of those games; I got really heavily into KEMCO rpgs on Android in the 2015-2019 era. Most of them take about 10 hours to play through, an while they're often derivative and repetitive, they're entertaining. They tend to be pretty breezy without a lot of grinding (though it'll also depend on how the XBox versions handle the "bonus stores" that were there to encourage micropayments). I wouldn't shell out $200 for the bundle, though--you'll never make it through 50 games, and that's basically only half-price vs. the Play Store, where the ad-free versions of the games run $8 or so. (The Steam versions of these run $10-20, and they are NOT worth $20 each!)

I'd say, grab your phone and grab a couple of "free with ads" version of their games and see if you like the feel, then go from there.
 
Lokii

Lokii

—
(He/Him)
Staff member
Moderator
They’re unjustly reviled. I’ve played a couple and there’s nothing wrong with them except an impression that because they were made on a budget for a mobile audience they must be a cash grab. It’s not like they’re entirely cookie cutter. There’s plenty of interesting systems and conceits in the library, even if the art style is fairly uniform and they largely follow standard JRPG structure. Of course quality varies and some are more derivative than others, but there’s this assumption that if it comes out of Kemco it must be trash, which simply isn’t true.
 
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Octopus Prime

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Yeah they ain’t gonna break your knees or nothing, they’re just kind of… acceptable.

They’ve built their entire corporate identity out of games on the same tier as the original Lufia or Paladins Quest
 
Lokii

Lokii

—
(He/Him)
Staff member
Moderator
I love there’s a huge secret library of short 16-bit RPGs. What a treasure, really. Even if they all hit in the C- to B range.
 
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