toxicitizen

Last round of purchases. Spent all I had left in my Steam wallet so that should be it for me. Really eager to finally try Obduction as I've been itching for a Witness-like game all year.

I drunkenly added a hundred bucks to my Steam wallet a few nights ago, so I kinda had to buy something. I tried the Factorio demo last night and I am genuinely worried about it taking over my entire life. Also, I knew Dead Cells was supposed to be good but man, it's like really fucking good. Best blind purchase I've made in a while.

That's a pretty good discount but not quite good enough to buy it for a console I don't own. It's kinda frustrating because there's been exactly zero sales for it on Steam. Koei Tecmo are kind of awful at the whole Steam sale thing. Even Atelier Firis, which came out almost a year ago, is only 30% off.

If Blue Reflection had any discount whatsoever, I'd probably pull the trigger as well. I've been super tempted to get it since launch. I'm really digging the music and aesthetics and it just looks like something I'd enjoy. Let me know how it is. @Mal Nothing is as in your face as Senran Kagura. That's fan service pushed to such an extreme that it becomes self-parody.

I don't know about the PS1 version but the PSP version definitely has slowdown in some attack animations. There's actually a fan patch to fix it. Also, this game needs to be on Steam already. Ffs, S-E, what's taking so long?!

Lmao man, you guys just can't let this one go. I kinda hope that he somehow gets an email notification every single time this gets bumped.

Not a spoiler so I'm not gonna bother keeping it tagged. But I think it's more like Bracer > Police > Military. Apparently, early in planning stages the Cold Steel MC was intended to just be part of the military. I don't remember the exact reason why they ultimately didn't go with that but student from a military academy definitely keeps that idea in there. And the plot certainly has a strong military theme to it.

Do you mean And yeah, Calvard seems to be the guess of most people but I can't say I picked up on any in-game hints. It does seem very likely since it's the only major power remaining on the continent, as far as I'm aware. Yeah, I learned the hard way to stay out of Kiseki threads about newly announced stuff on GAF/Era. The annoying thing about suggested spoilers is that you get annoyed and gtfo but sometimes you don't know if you've actually been spoiled or if you're just connecting dots that you shouldn't be. And you sure as shit don't want to go back in for confirmation lol. For a while I thought I had a major death in CSII spoiled but then I saw some art from CSIII with that character and realized the "spoiler" was probably just a joke. That's when I took more of a "fuck it" mentality. I'd rather remain unspoiled but in a year's time we're likely to be two full games behind, so accidental spoilers seem sort of unavoidable. If it happens, whatever. No point freaking out about it. At the very least this is one reason to be thankful that the Trails series is still fairly niche. Assholes can't go around spoiling it if they don't know it even exists. edit: Oh! Forgot to mention it the other day but Durante said on Era that he's aiming for a February release on CSII PC. Although it needs to be stressed that it was 1) said drunkenly and 2) he was only speaking for himself, i.e. XSEED could have other plans or whatever.

You're a more patient man than I am. I feel like even the first Cold Steel spoiled the hell out of Zero despite keeping things vague. I could be wrong here but I'm assuming that At this point I think I just kind of accepted it. I'm not gonna seek out spoilers for CSII+ but I'm not gonna worry about Crossbell too much. I'll just play the games as they come out (officially) in english. I'd rather just bite the bullet than hold off for fear of spoiling games we might never actually get. Also, Dengeki had interviews with game creators about what's coming in 2018 and Kondo had this to say: We now know there was foreshadowing for Cold Steel as far back as the 3rd, so it sounds like some of their long-term plans are finally going to be wrapping up and CSIV will have some huge reveals for the series overarching plot. If it wasn't for the fact that they've actually said there will be another arc after, this as well as the "End of Saga" subtitle would make me think this is the final Kiseki game. Kinda makes me really curious about what's coming after the Erebonia arc.

At this point my attention is just all over the place and I think the only game I have a realistic chance of finishing before the end of the year is Tokyo Xanadu, so I'm just gonna make my picks now. GOTY - Nier:Automata I hesitated between this and Resident Evil 7 but ultimately this was a much stronger experience for me. RE7 lost way too much steam near the end and had nowhere near as strong of an impact on me. The last few routes of Automata were just pure fucking madness. It's the closest any game I've played has come to matching MGS2 in that regard. Runner-ups - Resident Evil 7 Obviously, since I actually considered picking it for GOTY. It wasn't perfect but it was a solid return to form for the series, which I think is more than anyone could've realistically expected. The things it did right, it did really right. It's gonna be really interesting to see if they learned the right lessons and how they handle the next one. Falcom 2017 was the year of Falcom and gave us not one but two Trails releases. None of these games stand out individually as GOTY candidates but the series as a whole is definitely one of my all-time favorites. If it wasn't for Nier being so freaking good, I might have actually given my GOTY as a tie to 3rd and Cold Steel like I joked about earlier this year. And that's not even counting Ys Seven, Tokyo Xanadu and Zwei. Ys VIII would be included as well if it wasn't for NISA royally fucking everything up about its release. I don't think it'll be possible for any other year to top this one in terms of Falcom goodness. Hollow Knight One of the best (maybe even the best) metroidvanias I've ever played, no exaggeration. This would've likely been my GOTY if it had come out any other year. Honorable mention - Nioh I'm counting this one separately because I haven't actually finished it yet. I got distracted from it and haven't gone back to it yet. It's a pretty damn solid Souls-like and I feel like it would've been a GOTY candidate if I had gotten into it more than I have. I'm not even sure why I didn't because I really enjoyed the time I put into it. It just hasn't sucked me in as much as the Souls series has, I guess.

I saw the key art and I'm honestly not sure I get what the spoiler is supposed to be. I'm sure I'll come to regret it in time, assuming I'm still alive by the time these games come out over here on PC. But man, constantly feeling like you have to dodge spoilers is kind of exhausting when you know it's not coming for a good long while. Kinda wish I didn't give a shit... Or that these games didn't take so freaking long to come over. That would work, too. And it doesn't help that Zero and Ao will most likely not get before CS3. So those two will get the shit spoiled out of them regardless. Hell, CS1 kept things relatively vague but from what I heard even CS2 stops giving a shit about that.

There was a voucher for it on GMG last night that you could stack with a base discount, so I went for it. I don't think any game has ever grown on me this exponentially and quickly. After my first half hour with it last night, I was pretty much thinking "Ugh why did I buy this? I knew I wouldn't like it..." I've never been intro Contra-type games all that much and I let the hype sucker me into buying it. I put a few more hours into it today and yeah, no, this is fucking quality. You know a game is doing something right when you haven't even cleared the first world yet but you're already replaying all the levels and bosses you've already beaten just to get that perfect score.

Hmm, I know which games I want to mention as runner up or honorable mention but I'm honestly not sure about my top pick. There's two titles I'm hesitating between and I feel like I should at least play Prey before making a final decision. But I'm already in the middle of like 3 games and there's less than 2 weeks left to the year...

Yeah, Atelier mostly shows how big of a difference shading makes. It just looks flat and shitty. Digimon almost looks like they're remaking a PS1 game and comparing it with the original lol.

Uh, what? The decisions thing is true and weird given the narrative but it's still a fantastic puzzle game. Don't listen to Ethan, he's a shit mod! Also, this being on Vita is some seriously weird platform choice. I wonder if it'll at least be on XBO in the West considering it was originally multiplatform. This is Atlus we're talking about, though, so the stupidest possible outcome is basically par for the course, I guess. I probably would've been all over the Vita version a couple years ago but I don't know at this point. Some recent Vita versions were very much in "Oh god why" territory. This is the new Atelier game. I think it's the last one they'll be putting on Vita because it seriously looks like they didn't even try lol. PS4: Switch: Vita: And here's something from a recent Digimon game lmao

Yeah, I saw that earlier. It's pretty neat, although I'm a sucker for rewatching anime OPs, so I probably won't use it every single time lol.

I'm not on the Discord, no. I didn't even have a Discord account until very recently (and even then I was mostly just sitting in the channel waiting for the ResetEra migration). I was talking specifically about

Just got back from seeing The Last Jedi. I kind of expected to be able to point to at least one thing that explained why some people hated it so much but I can't. Reading about it now, it seems to be mostly due to the elements that were... let's go with subverted. There were a few things I wasn't so sure about when I walked out of the theater and the more I think about them the less I like them but overall it's at least as good as The Force Awakens. It felt a bit too long, though. That one subplot in the middle that was kinda boring and ultimately had no impact on the story whatsoever. How did that not get left on the cutting room floor?

They're still a relatively small studio, right? Between Ys and Trails alone, I'm having a hard time picturing them having another major series. Especially given how story-heavy Ys is apparently becoming. I'm really curious to finally see if Ys VIII truly rivals Trails in that regard. Then there's Tokyo Xanadu, which I really hope wasn't a one-off. I'm not done with it yet but I'm really enjoying having a Falcom game set in the "real" world, so I hope they're planning a sequel or something.

Darksiders III seems to be coming along very nicely. I remember thinking the initial gameplay reveal felt a bit off and stiff but I'm really not getting the same vibe from this. I was hoping it was just due to it being early in development and it seems that was exactly the case.

Hey, I'm all for random tangents that cause other people to join in. Is there any censorship drama surrounding Tokyo Xanadu, though? I'm not aware of any and there hasn't been anything in the game itself that stood out to me. The thing about censorship is that I agree with the sentiment of being against it as a general rule but I'm a bit more selective about what I personally get upset about. Mainly because of how it often seems to revolve around "they edited this outfit and now we can't see the panties of the 8 year old loli anymore!" That is just not a hill I'm going to die on. My stance on that kind of censorship is very much "and nothing of value was lost".

Not a Hero is the free one, End of Zoe is like 15 bucks on its own. And from what I've heard, the free one is the better of the two lol.

I honestly think most of them lack the self-awareness to even realize that they're awful people but that's fairly typical of shitty people in general. What really boggles my mind is this notion that there's a group of people hellbent on ruining something as inconsequential as video games by making them more inclusive (?????) and how that's somehow something worth worrying about. I've yet to see anyone unironically complain about SJWs and follow that up by raising anything remotely close to a valid concern. I mean, as far as conspiracy theories go, this one is just kinda sad and pathetic. I get that online anonymity can cause people to let out their crazier side but if someone I was talking to IRL started ranting about that shit I'd just start backing away slowly and would genuinely question their mental well-being.

You're joking but I actually saw a thread on the Okami Steam Hub that really made my head hurt the other day. It might've been trolling (I honestly doubt it...) but someone was asking about the game's subtitles and whether "SJWs got their hands on them". I guess they were worried that the game's subs had been edited by the Evil SJW Illuminati... or something? Why they thought someone would feel the need to change the script and story of Okami, of all fucking things, for seemingly no reason is honestly beyond me. Sometimes I seriously wonder what world these fucking idiots think they live in... Also, you did buy Zwei while I still haven't, so I'll let your transgression slide this time!

So, after ~25h of playtime, I reached what feels like it was probably the halfway point of Tokyo Xanadu. Which means I'm ready to give some more detailed thoughts about it. This is a Falcom game for sure, it's pretty damn good and it's up there with Trails and Ys as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't top those series' respective peaks but it's definitely better than their lows. I don't know if I got used to it or if it just wasn't as bad as I initially thought but the combat actually works pretty well once you get used to it. It felt stiff like Cold Steel at first but by this point I've gotten used to running around, timing my attacks and dodging just fine. It's not as fast and tight as Ys but it's way less awkward than pulling off those advantage backstabs in Cold Steel. Besides, apparently Ys is the wrong Falcom series to compare this to. I couldn't know at first because I haven't played it but apparently this is pretty much Falcom doing a modern take on the Zwei formula, which actually makes me way more interested in Zwei. I mean, I already was but now I'm actually a little hyped to play them. The story has been mostly episodic for the first half of the game (as if to emphasize it even more, the game actually replays the anime OP at the beginning of every single chapter). I feel like that's probably going to change after the point where I stopped yesterday, though. The game was setting up a clear direction/end game for future chapters and, as with Trails, things are slowly starting to pick up halfway through. I'm really looking forward to seeing if it's going to get as crazy as Trails can get. Few games have managed to top the final 30mins of Cold Steel 1 as far as "Holy fucking shit, HYPE!!!" goes. As for the localization, so far it's been pretty solid imho. Outside of the obvious handful of garbage ("fukkleducks" or whatever the hell it was), there's the occasional line that feels a bit weird but it's often because it feels so much like Trails that sometimes the more "modern" language can feel out of place somewhat. Seriously, this feels so much like Cold Steel on the surface that it's easy to forget it's not actually a Trails game. At times it honestly almost feels like a What-If Trails spin-off. Hell, there's at least one music track that I think might actually be straight up lifted from the Cold Steel OST and some of them would feel right at home in Trails. And, unsurprisingly given how it borrows from it even more heavily than Cold Steel, there's even some that sound really Persona-like to me. So yeah, TL;DR: Tokyo Xanadu is fucking great and you're a bad Falcom fan if you don't buy it!