toxicitizen

I heard really good things about that game. I really need to play it. I'm so starved for good stealth games these days... Hopefully with the sequel coming it'll show up in Humble Choice in the near future.

No MP, spells have charges like the original. I think other than some QoL changes they stayed as close to the original as possible for the most part. Although I think there are items in this one that you couldn't buy before, yeah. There's hi-potions (heals for 150 vs 50 for a potion), ether and probably phoenix downs? I can't really compare the difficulty to other versions as I've only played the GBA remake and it was too long ago. I found it to be on the easy side but I was probably overleveled because I spent a good chunk of time basically just going everywhere with my boat when I wasn't sure where to go next. By the end I was basically drowning in gil so I just bought 99 of everything I could. The final boss is the only one that didn't go down almost immediately lol. edit: Just looked at a differences list and it might actually be closer to the GBA version in terms of difficulty. I'd consider those QoL changes, though, because the experience you're describing doesn't sound hard so much as miserable lol.

3 days but the first one isn't very long. Took me about 15 hours and I barely remembered anything about it, so it can probably be done in 10h or so if you know what you're doing.

Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster I mean, what do you want me to say? It's Final Fantasy. If it wasn't good, we wouldn't be coming up on number 16. I have to say, though, these Pixel Remasters turned out really fantastic. Some skepticism was warranted because Square-Enix don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to rereleasing their older JRPGs, especially when it comes to Final Fantasy. But they really knocked it out of the park this time. The redone sprites look gorgeous, especially if you turn on the scanline filter to make them really pop. And apparently they tried to recreate the original Amano art as closely as possible this time so instead of being based on the redone spritework of previous rereleases, they're actually much closer to the original NES versions but of much higher quality. And the redone sprites aren't even the best part! I'm honestly baffled that they didn't lean heavily on this to market these things but they also remade the soundtracks and holy shit, the new arrangements are really fucking good. Honestly, I was mostly concerned about the sprites like everyone else and never really considered the soundtracks. I was already looking forward to FFIV and FFVI the most but I'm even more excited for them now that I know how insanely good the soundtracks are going to be. I mean, just listen! So yeah, these turned out to be way higher quality than I think anyone could've reasonably anticipated. I don't feel like they're overpriced anymore. It's honestly shocking coming from Square-Enix. I really hope this is the amount of effort they'll put into rereleases going forward because this is the kind of love these classics deserve, not whatever the fuck was going on with the previous remake FFVI and the Steam release of Chrono Trigger. And yes, before you ask, I did in fact kill Chaos. Now on to FFII! Oh and Square-Enix, once you're done with these do Dragon Quest I-VI you cowards!

Eh, HD2D looks great but I can't say I'd necessarily want everything in that style. I'm glad that they released versions of the games that are both well made and close to their original form. Oh no, people were super negative and nitpicky about the most insane shit from the outset. I've seen complaints ranging from "the new sprites look better than the original but worse than this one specific version from 17 years ago so it's shit" all the way to "the new sprites and backgrounds are even worse than the ugly mobile remakes and they ruin the art style!!!". Shit, I've seen complaining about the quality of the fucking menus. Like, it made me wonder if I was taking crazy pills because it all looks great to me? I get that they appear to have unified the games to a common art style that might be slightly lower quality than like... some versions of FFVI or whatever. But they all look great so who gives a fuck? The price, lack of console releases for now and missing bonus content from some rereleases are all valid things to be unhappy about but that's not even close to being all people were complaining about. Like, I get being pessimistic when it comes to Square-Enix; that company has a knack for fucking up in the most asinine ways. But some people are weirdly intense about pixel art, I guess. It's funny though because now that they're actually out the overall impressions are incredibly positive. So this was just people freaking out over nothing and could've been avoided if Square-Enix hadn't been so secretive about the games for the last month or so.

Final Fantasy I and II are finally on Steam! I know some people are impossible to please and will always find something to bitch and whine about but I'm pretty happy with these, personally. The sprites and backgrounds all look great to me and the remastered music is fantastic! And there's even a scanlines filter which I was hoping for but, this being Square-Enix, that I honestly didn't expect. The english font looks ugly but turns out you can easily swap it with the Japanese one and it looks much better. A pixelated font would be nice but it's not something that's going to keep me from enjoying these.

Just finished Cryptonomicon by Neal Stepheson. I've been chipping away at it almost every night for like a month now. Man, this was an insanely long book! Ultimately I think I liked it a little less than the previous Stephenson book I read, The Diamond Age, which I also liked a little less than the previous Stephenson book I read, Snow Crash. That's not to say I didn't like Cryptonomicon, though. It just wasn't quite what I expected. I knew it involved cryptography and the search for hidden WWII gold so I figured it would be more of an adventure thriller but it turned out to be very slow and meandering. I could tell you more or less what happens in it but I don't think I could tell you what the actual plot was in any kind of succinct way. It takes place in two different time period (WWII and the "present", which I guess in this case is the late 90s since that's when the book came out) and just... lots of stuff happens in both timeline. Like, you know those pacing curves you sometimes see where it keeps going up and down, trending upwards all the way and reaches its peak at the climax? A New Hope is often used as a perfect example of proper pacing. Well, I feel like Cryptonomicon's pacing curve would be a perfectly horizontal line lol. Most of the action takes place in the WWII timeline and it's told in such a matter of fact manner that it never really feels exciting or tense. This might sound bad but keep in mind that this is a 900 pages, almost 400k words long monstrosity and I never once considered stopping so it was clearly doing something right. It might be slow and at times a bit dry but it's also very, very interesting. This is probably something where YMMV but I loved reading about WWII-era code breaking and the early days of computer science with Alan Turing and how it all led to the birth of the computer. I'm starting to get the sense that Stephenson is one of those authors kinda like Stephen King where he's so good at what he does well (in Stephenson's case, info dumps and a heavy focus on the science) that if you like that particular aspect of his writing then you can look past everything else. And I think Stephenson knows this because even when he's trying to be funny he still sticks to dry humor and plays to his strengths: infodumps and focus on the science. Like, at one point he goes on a tangent for several pages about the best way to eat Cap'n Crunch cereal, what temperature the milk should be and what the perfect time to introduce it to the cereal is and I can't really explain why but it's somehow fascinating. There's another one where instead of just saying "Lawrence couldn't focus on his work because he was horny" he goes into this insane, several pages long mathematical model of horniness level over time with graphs and everything. It's kind of amazing. I don't know if the book needed to be as long as it was. I feel like some chapters could've been cut and it could've been a few hundred pages shorter and achieved the same effect. But ultimately none of it was boring and I really enjoyed the book overall so I guess I can't complain.

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox Given the more contained setting (and what HowLongToBeat told me), I was under the impression that this one would be shorter than Lacrimosa of Dana and lol. I guess it technically was but only marginally so. Not that I'm complaining though. This is a game I bought full price at launch so I definitely got my money's worth. It's just that these games are such a far cry from the old ones. The old ones are so short and sweet that they leave you wanting more. A replay of Ys I and II usually turns into a replay of Felghana as well, and fuck it let's do Origin too while we're at it because why not. But these last two are so fucking long that it's just not the same. They're really good so they don't overstay their welcome by any means but by the time they're over I've had my fill. So yeah, looks like Trails of Ys is going to be the norm going forward. I thought it would be completely different because of the setting but this is basically Lacrimosa of Dana all over again. It's just set in a big cursed city full of spooky monsters instead of an uncharted island crawling with dinosaurs. There's also actual antagonists this time around as opposed to just... whatever was going on in the last one. But most of the game structure and gameplay mechanics are identical and the elements that are new are mostly superficial. Like, yeah, Adol has anime superpowers now but the combat still plays pretty much the same. There's an emphasis on vertical traversal that wasn't there before but they don't do as much with it as you might expect. I think it was added mainly to get more mileage of their world map because the city isn't actually that large. Hell, early on they make a big deal about how the curse keeps you trapped within the walls of the city but at some point you just end up going outside anyway because you've run out of places to explore in the city. It does improve in the one area that badly needed it, though: the graphics. I mean, it still looks like a Falcom game but I went back to look at screenshots of Lacrimosa of Dana and holy fuck it looks so much worse than I remembered. I know it actually was a Vita game but I don't remember it looking so much like one. Monstrum Nox looks like it was made within the last decade, or at least very late in the previous one. ? Lacrimosa of Dana is the one people have been jokingly calling Trails of Ys but the fact that Monstrum Nox has you spending a good chunk of your time running around a city and completing side-quests for people made it feel much closer to the Trails series to me. And man, it made me realize just how much I fucking miss Trails lol. I've been mostly checked out on the Trails series for a few years now. The switch to NISA and the increased importance of the missing Crossbell games for Cold Steel III and IV were already a bummer and on top of that I had a pretty rough period with depression and kinda lost interest in games altogether around 2019 and for most of 2020. I'm doing a lot better now and slowly getting into games again and yeah, I need me some Trails, baby. I think a replay of the Sky trilogy is in the cards for me while I wait for Trails from Zero.

Yeah, I got that. I was replying to the "banging action figures together" label in particular, which to me the Marvel movies absolutely are. I didn't realize Ethan specifically meant metaverse by that.

I mean, some of the MCU movies are basically this and I find them pretty entertaining. ? They're the only ones that come to mind, though...

Why would that make your nervous?

Oh right, we have this thread now. I haven't permanently shelved it but I guess it counts. Horizon: Zero Dawn I gave it a dozen hours or so and it was fine but I just wasn't feeling it at the time and over a month later I still haven't felt any desire to return to it. Gonna have to try again at some later time, I guess. Ideally after a more thorough PC upgrade because it actually made me realize that I'm very likely CPU-limited with my current setup. It kinda ran like shit and it really shouldn't with the GPU I have. ?

Man, I could've told you that when the trailer came out and Game of Thrones was in it. Once I realized this was basically a Ready Player One kinda deal but instead of lazy nostalgia bait it was just one giant advertising for Warner Bros, I lost what little morbid curiosity I had.

Sure but I feel like a P4G port isn't something they'd tease ahead of time, especially not as an "anniversary project". They'd probably just shadow drop it like they did with the Steam release.

I don't know if I'd expect mere ports from this. Persona is their big cash cow, surely these will all be brand new projects? At the very least, I'm not expecting the PC port of Royal to be one of the seven. Especially not coming from the Japanese side. Although a multiplatform release that includes Xbox might be a big enough deal to justify taking one slot. And now that I think about it, the website phrases it as seven "anniversary projects" so I think they may not necessarily all be games. I was about to guess maybe a Persona 5 anime but I looked it up just in case and it looks like there's already one lol. But if there are any spin-off games I'd expect the usual suspects: fighting game, dancing game, maybe Persona Q3 for Switch.

Atlus launched a Persona 25th Anniversary website and started teasing seven upcoming project announcements. There's also some merch up for pre-order and they seem to be heavily hinting at Persona 6. And even more interesting is this one that has all the mainline games but also has two secret titles: I'm thinking Persona 6 and that remake Persona 3 so desperately needs?

You just got an RTX card, right? May wanna hold off for the ray-tracing update to play it!

Monstrum Nox is weird. You can see the parts they recycled from Lacrimosa of Dana but the new elements feel so out of left field. Adol now has anime superpowers and a new goth look and there's an emphasis on vertical traversal that wasn't in any of the previous games. I'm not very far into it but I'm really digging it so far. It's cool to see that Falcom isn't afraid to fuck with the formula a little. Besides, I think that Lacrimosa took the whole "exploring uncharted forest/island/whatever" concept about as far as it could go. Man, that game was long.

For some reason, it completely slipped my mind that Ys IX was coming out on PC today. I kinda feel like an idiot for not saving my Steam credit for it... ? Oh well, at least I was able to get 18% off from Fanatical so I saved almost as much as I would have. Got the Digital Deluxe Edition for the price of the base game. That way I won't miss out on any of the bonuses although I'm really not a fan of them being time limited to launch week. That's super fucking shitty... Feels good to be able to buy a Falcom game day one again, though! I skipped Cold Steel III and IV since I wanted to wait for Crossbell and Ys VIII launched in such a poor state that I had to wait for a sale.

Realized after my last round of purchases that I had enough Steam card drops accumulated to justify running idle master and sell them, so I did and made enough about 27 bucks. I was hesitating between two games so uh... Some armor designs in FFXIV are clearly inspired by XII and it kinda made me want to revisit it in the near future. Probably not anytime soon, though, as FFXIV is going to keep me busy for a while still. There's also the Pixel Remasters coming out at the end of the month that are probably going to be too tempting for me not to get. Plus, retro FF plays differently enough that playing them alongside FFXIV won't feel like too much of the same thing.

If you liked that one, you'll love what I found in the replies: Like, this works so perfectly as a shitpost that I honestly can't be 100% sure he's being serious even though I know he's a fucking idiot.

I've been playing FFXIV obsessively all month and I've been looking forward to the Steam sale solely because I wanted to buy Shadowbringers. It's probably going to be at least another month (possibly two lol) before I reach that content, though. After a solid 3 weeks of playing, I'm only juuust about to reach Heavensward, the first expansion. Which is the point where everyone says the story gets real good so I'm excited to finally see why everyone is calling XIV the best FF in years. I'm enjoying it a lot so far, so if it actually gets even better I can kinda believe it already. Not like there's been a ton of competition in that area over the last two decades lol... As for Forza, I've been wanting a good arcade-style racing game to play on and off and this one seems like the best choice now that it's available on Steam. I really enjoyed the little of it I played while I was subbed to Gamepass.

Been reading some Junji Ito this week and it kinda made me go "Oh, right. Manga's pretty good!" and I just happen to have some extra spending money right now. So instead of buying a bunch of Steam games I'm not going to touch anytime soon, I saw that this was coincidentally back in stock and I just had to treat myself I also got a Dune boxed set despite me already owning them because I'm an idiot. In my defense, the ones I have are these really cheap book club editions that I kinda don't like whereas the boxed set comes with these new minimalist covers that I really love. Also it was on sale and I had some store credit. ? Really looking forward to rereading the first one ahead of the new movie!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! The one good thing about the Epic Game Store is that they are so inept at, well, everything, that we can actually get database leaks again!

Lol. Man, what is it about book 5? That's also where I stopped the first time but it's not like it's bad or anything. It even ends on a pretty good cliffhanger. Not as good as Blaine the Mono but definitely enough to make you hurt for more.