toxicitizen

Don't really have any predictions this year but I do have a few things I'm hoping for. Itsuno's secret project is finally announced to be Devil May Cry 5 That trademark leak turns out to be real and Bethesda announces The Evil Within 2 (this and Wolfenstein 2 are very likely, I think) And, of course, my continued hope for a new Splinter Cell. They revealed Far Cry 5 early, so this has to mean they have more than just the new AC, right?!? I'm also very curious to see what XSEED's E3 line-up will be. They usually announce it the week before the show and with Tokyo Xanadu and Ys VIII both going to other companies I can't really make any guesses. We already know it's coming but I'm not sure if that Senran Kagura Splatoon rip-off was officially announced. Probably that, I guess. Last year they announced a bunch of indie games, which was a little disappointing, so I'm hoping they have at least one or two neat surprises this year.

That's quite the understatement! It looks so good that I'm really tempted to grab their previous games. The graphics are a bit of a turn off but I've heard really good things about them.

Are you sure the quest item you need to find is there? I don't remember any quest that was gated off by the main story like that, at least not off the top of my head. And locked doors and elevators in the abandoned factory definitely sounds like stuff that will eventually open up through the main story.

Yeah, this is likely just a happy accident, I doubt it was intended to be so topical. Besides, this seems to be leaning on the cult angle more than anything else. It's almost like the type of people that would get triggered by this are fucking idiots or something!

FTFY. And yeah, I haven't been all that interested in the series recently but this direction is interesting enough that I might actually jump in. I was pretty much sold right away on the first piece of art they released.

The weird thing is I don't even have anything against NISA. I never had any problems with their work on Disgaea and Danganronpa. If anything, it's Aksys and Tokyo Xanadu we should be worrying about. I know that NISA haven't done anything wrong here but I can't help but feel like they're a bunch of butts for stealing Ys from XSEED. edit: Also, the first part of your post confused the shit out of me lol. When you say "Kiseki", do you mean the series as a whole? The way I'm reading it, it makes more sense if you meant Trails in the Sky, which would be Sora.

We also know that it's releasing on Sept 12 (15 in EU). I'm still apprehensive as to whether or not NISA will do as good of a job as XSEED would have but with a release date it's hard not get hyped as hell. On the other hand, my hype for Cold Steel III diminished a bit due to something I learned recently. They've been showing new characters this week and what I assumed were two new ones are actually people from Zero/Ao. So, it looks like CSIII will tie into Zero/Ao more than the previous games, which means we'll inevitably miss out on some stuff by not having the full picture. Come on XSEED, give Crossbell! ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Yeah, the thing about Nier is that it has some really cool ideas and does some really neat experimental things with its gameplay but it's just not a very well-made game. I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to play it (unless they bring out a remaster), but it's not like it would be the worst thing in the world to play. Personally I had to drop it halfway through, I just wasn't enjoying it. I get what you mean, though. That story recap spoiled the entire thing and kinda made me want to maybe give it another shot at some point. Maybe if they remaster it and release it on PC...

The two games thing isn't much of a mystery. I think it'll be covered in the recap I linked but basically they're the exact same game except for the protagonist. In the JP PS3 version, he's younger and is the brother of a girl in the game. In the X360 version, he's older (and uglier) and is her father instead. When the time came to localize it for the West, we ended up only getting the father version for both platforms. Probably because the 360 version was made to be more appealing to western players in the first place.

It's a sequel set in the same world but thousands of years (I wanna say 10,000?) in the future. I don't know how far in you are or when it's mentioned exactly but the basic premise is that humans are hiding out on the moon because of the alien invasion. Any questions you might have beyond that will be addressed in the game. The connection between OG Nier and Automata are fairly minimal as far as the main plot goes. You'll get more out of it if you're familiar with it but you can still play and enjoy Automata just fine without. Personally, I recommend watching a story recap on youtube. You'll learn everything you need to know with a minimal time investment. And, more importantly, you won't have to play the original Nier which is honestly not a good game. Youtuber Clemps did a pretty thorough and informative one, if you can tolerate cringy humor.

Falcom games tend to have great music in general and the Trails series is no exception, but goddamn the version of Overdosing Heavenly Bliss from the Trails in the Sky Zanmai album is so fucking good!

I scotch taped mine and just grabbed the first Dark Tower book and read for a while. That's one of the really annoying/stupid ones because you only get him at the very end of the game and you don't even have that many opportunities to ride him. And I think it has to be done in a single playthrough, because at one point I started a new game to grind kills for another achievement and I'm pretty sure that caused the counters for that one and the Ruin one to reset.

Yeah, I remember it being a bitch on console and it was honestly even worse with the Steam controller because I suck at using the trackpad for stuff that requires precision. But then I had the brilliant idea to try using the mouse instead and got it on my first try. It makes it so much easier lol.

Darksiders Warmastered Edition. Man, I love this game. It has aged a tiny bit and at this point this was (at least) my third playthrough, so the first half of the game was a bit dull. But overall it's still a solid Zelda clone with a pretty cool comic book art syle. Also, feels good to have finally completed it. It's not particularly challenging but it has a few mind-numbingly time consuming achievements. This is one of those games that I was on track to platinum back on PS3 but ended up putting off and never going back to finish. Then I played the original PC release but the achievements were super fucking buggy where even some non-missable story ones didn't unlock. So, yeah, this was long overdue. Not gonna jump into Darksiders II right away but I am looking forward to replaying it even more. I only played it the one time at launch, so I don't remember it as clearly as I did the first one.

Yeah, I got fucked over a few times by Kloe's S-Craft and the reviving thing. Also, about the nightmare arena, As for preparing/going into the final dungeon, here's a few tips.

Made a few bundle purchases this month since some stuff I've wanted for a while finally showed up in them. Not gonna list everything I got but here's the stuff I was mainly after. Stellaris being the early unlock for the next Humble Monthly. I couldn't resist despite the fact that I have an actual backlog of 4X games at this point.

I ended up having to abuse retry offset for that fight. Twice. It's that fucking brutal. There inevitably comes a point in the fight where if you're not able to finish him off very quickly it's essentially over. He just fucking wipes your party like it's nothing. It feels appropriate given who you're fighting but it's legitimately unfair lol. But yeah, that plane has some pretty good character moments. And the way Silver Will starts playing just as he tells Richard "Defeat me." So good!

So, this is old news but apparently Bungie's contract with Activision has this clause in it: which seems oddly specific to me. Like, why those three companies in particular? I guess Gearbox do work with random publishers sometimes but Epic hasn't done a whole lot other than UE development in recent years and Valve barely even makes games anymore. To me it kinda sounds like someone at Bungie has a beef with those specific companies, for some reason. Obviously I'm just speculating but that would be one hilariously stupid explanation for no Steam release. That could also explain why the original installment in their FPSMMO series mysteriously skipped PC, now that I think about it...

What? Why would they do that? All their games run through it. Maybe you're thinking of them phasing out the name "Battle.net"? The launcher was renamed to Blizzard App, which seems silly now given that everyone still calls it Battle.net and apparently it's not only for Blizzard games anymore lol.

Second season officially announced. No details yet, so we don't know if the plan is still to have a completely new story with a new cast of characters. I hope it is because I loved the original but I don't feel like there's a lot of potential for more interesting stories there nor do I particularly feel the need to revisit those characters all that much.

Yeah, that's a surprising move. I mean, not entirely but if it was something they wanted to do you'd think they would've done it with Call of Duty by now but nope. I have no issue with the Blizzard launcher but I'm not particularly interested in Destiny either, so all this really does for me is make me less likely to impulse buy it during a sale lol.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd. Well, that was kind of a weird way to end that trilogy. New structure, new protagonists and a mostly self-contained and personal story that's only tangentially related to the events of the first two games. Really, this game is more like a dungeon crawler built mainly to act as a delivery mechanism for a bunch of mostly unrelated short stories that focus on either backstory, world building or character development. I've seen the 3rd described as being less of a sequel and more of a "bridge" towards the rest of the series and I can definitely see why. Not complaining, though, because more Trails in the Sky is always welcome! I've seen more than a few people call it their favorite Trails game overall and I can't say I feel the same way but I'm really glad I got to visit Liberl and hang out with these characters one last time. I'm also more curious than ever about the games we still don't have in english. Some of these optional stories were pretty damn intriguing. One in particular was basically all build-up and foreshadowing for Trails of Cold Steel, which is crazy considering it predates the game by like 6 years! Makes you wonder what else was in there that I didn't or couldn't pick up on. I wouldn't rank any of the Trails games as all-time favorites individually, but with each new one I play I increasingly feel like the series as a whole is my favorite video game series right now. I really can't think of any other that compares to the way the overall thing is structured and evolves throughout the different sub-series. The only thing that comes to mind as being even a little similar is A Song of Ice and Fire with the way you have all these separate plot threads taking place all over the world with some characters occasionally crossing over between them. I really hope XSEED will confirm that they're doing the Crossbell games in the near future because I need more! There was something like 6 months between the release of SC and the announcement for 3rd, so hopefully we'll hear something by the end of the year. Maybe...

Randomly found out that Stone Sour have both a new single out and a new album coming out next month! Their albums tend to be hit and miss, though, so I'm cautiously optimistic. Hopefully it's not too much of a departure from House of Gold & Bones because I thought it was the best one since their debut.

Yeah, the last round is straight up bullshit. Felt like I totally lucked out when I got it. I had a good run and he had a bad one, that's all there was to it. Only tip I can give is to pay attention to which kind of fish can be used as bait for bigger ones and try to focus on catching as many of those as possible.