toxicitizen

Over the past few weeks I've fallen back into old buying habits pretty hard. ? Everything except for Iceborne and SFV Champion Edition upgrade was pretty cheap (5-10 bucks) but that's still an entirely unnecessary amount of game purchases for no particular reason. My wallet felt better when I was deep in depression and stopped caring about video games... ?

As much as it pains me to say this, never play the Trails games. ? They've got missable everything. One of the worst example I can think of is in the very first Trails in the Sky game. Side-quests are usually posted on a billboard you're meant to check regularly and they all have different time limits based on main story progression. So a short one should be done right away but a long one you can probably progress the main story a bit without the window closing. Not too bad, right? But some side-quests aren't actually posted on the board. So for those you need to actually talk to the concerned NPC to get the quest. Normally this still isn't too bad because in these games you're meant to constantly be talking to all NPCs. They all have their own stuff going on and keeping up with their various stories is one of the appeals of the series. But there's this one hidden side-quest that you get from this one guy hanging out at a lighthouse in an area that's pretty far out of the way, that you only visit like once normally (IIRC not even though the main quest but from another side-quest that happens during a different time window), and that you're very unlikely to even think to check regularly. I was pissed when I found out about that one lol. The more recent games have gotten better about it but the early ones are pretty bad about this. Personally, nothing makes me lose interest in getting all the achievements in a JRPG more than an achievement list that is impossible to complete without multiple playthroughs. It's one thing for like Trails or Persona to do this, but fucking Tales of Zestiria is out of its goddamned mind if it thinks I'm ever replaying it. Although having a turbo mode that lets you fast-forward through combat animations and cutscenes does mitigate this a lot.

FFIII was much less of a pain in the ass than FFII. There were only 2 or 3 one-time dungeons you had to make sure to get everything from and like one non-dungeon area that becomes inaccessible later on. So for the most part I could just check when the next missable thing was and just enjoy the game blindly until I reached that part. FFII is a huge pain in the ass because if you don't check the guide constantly you're almost guaranteed to miss something. There's no insane bullshit like "reach level 99 on every single character" or similar shit that just wastes your time. You just need to be on the lookout for missable chests and monsters for the bestiary. None of the games required more than an hour or two of post-game work to wrap up. FFI is the only one with a monster that had a truly rare spawn rate. Took me over an hour just to get that motherfucker...

Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster Going into this one, I was honestly worried about getting burned out playing all three games back-to-back. Especially after the more trying aspects of FFII. But it turned out to be completely unfounded because FFIII ended up being my favorite of the three and it's not even close. The game is sort of a cross between the first two games. It takes the structure of FFI with more of an overall framework than a story (the same old "something something crystals, go fix") but it ups the presentation with actual scripted scenes like in FFII. What surprised me was how much of the storytelling was done through the actual world design. I won't spoil it but that reveal was way more interesting than anything that happened in FFII. I couldn't really say why but exploring the world was way more fun in this one than in either of the previous two. It probably helps that you never have to figure out where you need to go. Even if you're not explicitly told where to go next, you always have at least some hint about where something is so you might as well go check that out. So the big new thing in this one is the introduction of the job system. I had never actually played any of the Finals that have it (as far as I'm aware, that would be III, V and the Zodiac version of XII), so I was coming into this fresh, with no idea what to expect. And I understand why people rave about it now. Just having access to all these options to customize your party is pretty cool in and of itself, but the game also keeps doing interesting things to encourage you to experiment. Early on you're sent to kill a boss in a nearby cave and they give you a sword that's supposed to be really strong against it but can only be equipped by a Red Mage. I switched my Black Mage to Red and ended up liking it so much I stuck with it for most of the game. Sometimes a boss will be designed to be weak to a certain job and will absolutely destroy you if you don't listen when the game tells you, for example, "I hear only a Dragoon can defeat Garuda." There's also a few times where you need to cast the mini status effect on yourself to explore tiny areas and your fighters will be useless in that state so you're better off swapping everyone to Black Mage. Some of the jobs seem kind of redundant (why would I switch someone to Viking when I've already had a Fighter since the beginning of the game?) so I ended up with a pretty standard party but I kinda want to replay it some day and make it a point to go for a weirder party composition, although some jobs seem kind of useless. The Scholar, for example, is necessary for a single boss fight but otherwise didn't seem to really have anything to make it worth sticking with. So yeah, that first trilogy went out on a high note. I can't believe this version of the game had never come out in english before. Fucking Nintendo keeping great JRPGs from us. ? What is it about JRPGs with 3 in their title that NoA hates so much? Anyway, can't wait for FFIV! I'm also really curious to see how they iterate on the job system in FFV now. I'm still looking forward to FFVI the most, though. Because it's the best one.

I meant nitpick with the remasters in general. That's just FFII being broken. ?

OH I FORGOT TO MENTION! Between my playthroughs of FFI and FFII, someone figured out how to mod in new fonts, so people started making all kinds of pixelated font mods. Spoiler for FFII I guess but it's the only screenshot I took because that line was so stupid and out of nowhere that it made me laugh out loud and I wanted to send it to my friend. The font was literally my only nitpick so these remasters are perfect now.

Yeah, maybe I wasn't clear but that's what I meant. The myth was that you needed to do the attack exploit otherwise you would have low HP or something. Definitely not the case in this one. My main 3 party members all had over 5-6K HP by the end of the game. The only times I was remotely in danger were those bullshit status effect fights. I don't know anything about the atrophy system but if it was removed in the GBA version then it's likely gone here as well. I think that's the version the balancing is mostly based on. The only actual thing that's new to this version that I'm aware of is there's now a soft cap to your weapon skill. Basically if you're overpowered and deal too much damage, you stop ranking up. There's an achievement for hitting level 16 on a weapon and to reach it I had to equip the weakest weapons I had and go fight some strong enemies otherwise everything died too quickly and I could never get enough hits in to actually rank up.

Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster This is one of the games in the series that I had never played. It's pretty good and in some ways is a massive improvement over the original. But it's also weirdly experimental and as a result has some elements that are... questionable. But let's start with the good. So the main thing is that your characters have no level. They don't level up, they just have skills that rank up with use. Want a character to be good with swords? Equip one and go fight some monsters. Same goes for spells. Max HP and MP goes up when you lose enough of it in battle. This led to a myth that you need to have your characters attack themselves to raise your HP but apparently that wasn't true before and it certainly isn't in this version either because I never did it and I had a fuckton of HP by the end of the game. I found the system a little stressful because I was worried about leveling my party "wrong" but that turned out to be unfounded. Just playing normally led to a fairly balanced (and overpowered) party. The only thing I did was go out of my way to cast more spells than I normally would to both increase my character's max MP and also rank up the spells themselves but that's honestly just how you should play this game anyway. The one thing you could fuck yourself over with is if you switch weapon type on a character. It's nothing that can't be fixed but if you spend half the game fighting with swords and switch to an axe your character's gonna suck with it and may never catch up with the rest of the party. You're better off picking a type for each character at the beginning and sticking with it. There's also this password system where you can learn certain keywords that NPCs tell you and ask others about them. It doesn't really accomplish anything that standard dialogue couldn't do but it's a neat little novelty. At least, up until the point where you're at the end of the game and realize you missed a single fucking keyword earlier and screwed yourself out of an achievement. I was so fucking pissed I just said fuck it and used a trainer to rush through the game at turbo speed with infinite HP/MP and no random encounter. Took me just a little over an hour from start to right before the end when you get the final keyword lol. I liked the game but I wasn't going to replay it just for this one fucking password because, well, we'll get to that in a bit. Then there's the main way where the game feels like a huge step up over the original: the story. In the original game, there's a little bit about saving a princess at the beginning and there's a bit of a twist at the end but most of the game is just "something's wrong with the crystals, go fix them". Sometimes you'll speak to an NPC and get a hint like "There's a vampire in a cave to the east that's been troubling us" but other than that you're mostly just walking around looking for whatever path is now open to you to reach the next town or dungeon. There's not really any kind of story linking it all together. Final Fantasy II not only has a story, it tells it through actual scenes with characters. I've seen people describe it as proto-FFIV and I really can't argue with that. It feels ahead of its time in a way that's kind of impressive. Especially when you add in the skill system that I didn't really see in games until Morrowind. It was probably done before that but it was still surprising to see in FFII. Now for the bad. Well, this game's dungeons were designed by fucking assholes. Like 90% of the doors in any given dungeon lead nowhere, they just spawn you in the middle of a "trap room" that's empty and has a higher monster encounter rate. Out of the entire game, you can count on one hand how many of these actually had chests in them. Yeah... Then there's the way status effects work. Basically, my understanding of it is that if it's inflicted through a melee attack, it's 100% guaranteed to affect you. Protection items straight up do not work against this. In previous versions, the idea was that you would have most of your party on the back row where they're safe and have just one tank up front taking all the hits. By the end of the game, your tank took so many hits that his evasion is super high and he's basically untouchable. They changed that. So now back row characters can get hit and you end up with a more even, but much lower, evasion stat on all your characters. This is a change they did NOT think through. Here's why it fucking sucks. Some encounters will have 4-5 of a single enemy type that will put any character they hit to sleep/paralyzed/stone/etc. Basically status effects that put them entirely out of action. If the monsters somehow get an ambush on you, there is a very decent chance that they will take out your entire party before you even get a turn, no matter how much stronger than them you are. It is utterly infuriating bullshit. Just to put this in perspective, consider that during my trainer run I actually died once. Just let that sink in. I opened a chest that had monsters in it and it was one of those bullshit unwinnable fights. I actually died during my infinite HP/one hit kill cheat run. That should tell you how fucking broken this shit is lmao. Thank FUCK the game has autosaves every time you enter a new map because you absolutely need to abuse that shit. Hell, there's also a quick save that you can use in dungeons that, in previous versions, normally would get deleted when you load it back up. In these remasters in doesn't get deleted and I now have a strong suspicion that FFII is the reason why. There are some maze-like maps where the autosaves aren't enough, you need to abuse the quicksave as well because a single unlucky encounter can send you all the way back to the start of the floor. It only happens in a few specific areas and it's honestly kinda rare all things considered but it's definitely an issue. So yeah, it's a pretty good game with some questionable design elements. I'm really glad I finally played it. It's probably not gonna make it into my favorite FFs but it's definitely worth playing at least once. Next up is FFIII, another one I never played. After that, that leaves on FFV although despite having started it several times across different versions, I don't think I ever actually finished FFIV. Also, I just realized that once I'll be done going through all the Pixel Remasters I believe that will leave Final Fantasy IX as the only one I've never played. ?@deanb

At this point I have enough novels to read to last me well into next year and I finally managed to convince myself I don't need any more (for now) but my idiot brain just keeps finding loopholes. So, in part due to my recent time with FFXIV and how much I'm enjoying the FF Pixel Remasters, I got these... I may have also bought some FFXIV art books last month...

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?