toxicitizen

I've also been playing Zero Time Dilemma the past few days. Almost 20h in and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on. I love it! I've seen a few things that I can guess will be expanded upon once I get into the final stretch, though. Starting to run out of branches on the flowchart, so I'm assuming that'll be soon. Hoping to finish it tonight, actually. How do you feel about the way the story is told, by the way? It ended up growing on me a lot but at first I was a little disappointed by how it's generally a bit more... brief, I guess? I don't know if it was a budget thing or just a by-product of making the switch to full cutscenes rather than static characters with dialog boxes but I feel like most of the scenes are shorter than in previous games. It kinda felt like the game wasn't going as in-depth as the previous two but that's impossible to say for sure until I've finished it.

Got a last minute urge to make a few more purchases last night, so I Iooked around for cheap stuff but ended up only grabbing a couple more. Cost me like 8 bucks for both. Heard good things about the room and it was like a dollar. I really need to get around to playing the Neptunia games, though. Idea Factory goes crazy with discounts, so it's hard not to grab their games. But I haven't touched any of them on Steam yet, just the first one on Vita a while back.

Looks like Aksys Games is localizing Tokyo Xanadu for Vita... and Steam! Really surprised that XSEED isn't doing this one considering their close relationship with Falcom. Worth nothing that, strangely enough, this is the original Vita release from last year and not the newly announced eX+ PS4 enhanced port. Really wonder why since the PS4 version would've likely facilitated the porting process. But more importantly, I'm really wondering if this means we could start seeing more PC releases of recent Falcom games. If Aksys is handling the port, that could explain why Falcom went with them over XSEED. I kinda hope Falcom is more hands on, though, because if they start putting resources into PC again, well, Trails of Cold Steel would be a pretty likely candidate. Cold Steel needs to be on Steam so badly, it's not even funny. edit: Oh and 999 and Virtue's Last Reward are both confirmed to be coming to "other platforms". Considering previous hints, Vita and Steam are a safe bet. Weird that they're not specifying, though. Also, 999's art is being reworked (or it was originally made in high def). That's great news because the pixelated art would've looked pretty awful on PC. Hopefully there will be other improvements as well. 999 badly needs a flowchart and an easy means of skipping through previously viewed scenes like VLR and ZTD.

Yeah, I also put about two hours into Subnautica tonight and it's pretty great. I'm starting to get a hang of things but for a while I was hanging too close to my pod and was running out of resources to gather, which slowed my progress down a bit. Hoping to have a base going tomorrow. Also, survival mode is pretty forgiving. I figured it was permadeath, since this is a survival game, but that's a separate mode. When you die, you only lose whatever's in your inventory and you respawn. It was kind of a relief the first time I died of dehydration because losing all my progress would've been a bit demoralizing.

Or, you know, a talented studio to work on it. There's some corners that were cut here but it's also not very well put together overall. At this point we can only hope that it gets the definitive adaptation it deserves once Miura gets around to finishing it. Like I said, I'll keep watching and hope it gets better. But I think as soon as I get a job I'll just order a bunch of the manga volumes on Amazon and read them instead. I read quite a few chapters years ago but I barely remember anything past the Golden Age arc. Should be a better experience than relying solely on this new series.

Is that how follow is meant to be used? I mostly just ignore it because I don't want game updates cluttering up my activity feed. I figured it was meant for stuff you were really interested in rather than on the fence. I just put everything that catches my eye on my wishlist and clean it up (order stuff and remove whatever doesn't look interesting enough to keep) every once in a while.

It has to be. There's no way anyone with functioning eyeballs could look at this and actually think it's a good idea. I'm assuming with 3D they can reuse models or whatever else that makes production cheaper/easier.

Hoooly shit, the first episode of the new Berserk series is... not great. Terrible art style, weird music that doesn't really fit the material and 3D that's somehow even worse than the movies. I'll keep watching because I love Berserk but seriously, why couldn't this be normal? Just do a normal fucking adaptation of Berserk. Is that so hard?

Think that should be it for me. There's more that I would've liked to grab but, combined with ZTD, that's probably more than I should've spent lol. Been waiting for good discounts on Transformers and Dragon Ball for a while now, so I couldn't resist. Subnautica was a bit of a gamble, though. I'm not usually big on survival games but this one looks really cool to me and the setting is a huge part of that. I've always been fascinated (and even a little creeped out) by underwater life, so this game has an appeal for me that other similar games simply don't have. I had a few more games in my cart but they were either pre-orders or brand new releases that had little to no discount, so they can wait a little longer.

It's finally time for another round of the Nonary Game! For a while there, I was legit worried it would never come. Now to play it all day long!

Alright, thanks!

Yeah, okay. That seems fairly bearable. At least, as long as you're not up to date... Don't think I'll catch up that quickly, though. I'm already 20 eps in because that show is just so easy to binge watch, but I don't think I'm going to mainline it. I really don't want to watch nothing else for that long. Crunchyroll has the episodes conveniently broken down by major story arcs, so I think I'll watch one, then take a break and watch some other stuff before starting the next one and so on. I'm in no rush to catch up. That being said, I am kinda looking forward to finally seeing what happens after Alabasta. I had watched up to right after that story arc way back then. I remember hearing that the Water 7 arc is pretty good.

Yeah, I figured that had to be the case. At some point, something has got to give. The anime started fairly soon after the manga, so it's pretty much inevitable without repeated breaks. What kind of padding is it, though? Is it what I like to call "DBZ syndrome" where the characters will just stand there and do nothing for entire episodes during fights? Or do they just constantly insert new but useless scenes that add nothing? Although, either way is far preferable to completely new story arcs not found in the manga, imho. In my experience, those are almost always complete garbage compared to the source material.

I looked up a list of filler for One Piece recently because that was my main concern in starting it and I thought there was surprisingly little of it. Obviously there's some, but the biggest chunks are like 10 episodes and there didn't seem to be that many of them. Otherwise it's just a few episodes (like 2-3) here and there. That didn't seem like a lot to me. I mean, I still remember the original Naruto series that went on like 2 fucking years of filler before they got to the time skip. That was just painful and killed my interest in the series entirely. I switched to the manga and even then I didn't stick with it for very long. Bleach was a similar situation although I did eventually go back and watch everything (skipping all the filler) up to what felt like a reasonable end point. But yeah, I get what you mean about the speed of release. I was surprised by how far JoJo has gotten ever since I watched the first season. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago but there's already like 3 more seasons. From what I remember years ago, anime ususally doesn't get made that fast except for those ridiculously long shows that run almost continuously. I'm guessing it has to do with JoJo being very popular and having a lot of source material already available. I'm kind of hoping the new Berserk series will be produced on a similar schedule. It's fucking criminal that we're only just now getting the post-Golden Age material. Speaking of which, anyone else stoked for the premiere friday? I just finished rewatching the movies tonight. They're far from perfect but at this point I'm just glad we're finally getting more Berserk.

Making you feel bad wasn't my intention, so please don't! Like I said, I only noticed the Parasyte one after the fact and I was able to avoid reading your post on JoJo once I saw where it was going, so no harm done. I was just asking you to be more careful in the future. The discovery is a big part of the fun for me in pretty much anything, so vague stuff like "wait until at least episode 5 to see if you like it" is fine but any kind of specific information tends to come across as something I wish I hadn't been told. I realize I'm more sensitive to that stuff than some people but I can't help it.

That's the chess-like game, right? If so, let me know how it is! I've been really curious about it.

Damn it, dude, please don't post shit like that without tagging it. That's just not cool. :/ I really don't appreciate spoilers, however minor they might be. I wasn't asking for an explanation, I did say I would watch it eventually. It's the second time you did it, too. I didn't say anything about the Parasyte one because I only noticed the implied spoiler after I'd watched the final episode but you could've easily completely ruined that part for me. Nothing makes me instantly lose interest in watching something more than having them spoiled... Like, over a decade later and I still haven't bothered reading the last two Dark Tower books because some asshole dropped a huge spoiler on me out of nowhere years ago.

Yeah, that's why I'm unsure about jumping right into Stardust Crusaders. I feel like there's something most people got out of the show that I missed. Looking back, I think that I was a bit disappointed by that and the show never completely recovered afterwards. I'm hoping I'll enjoy it more on a rewatch. I mean, it's not like I hated Battle Tendency or anything. Also, I'm looking forward to seeing stands if only to finally understand why people kept comparing Persona to JoJo. I can kind of vaguely infer what they are just from that but I've been curious about that for years. I don't think the anime had even started the first time I heard that comparison.

Just finished Parasyte. It was kind of a weird finale but that was a pretty intense episode. And yeah, I'd have been pissed too in regards to your spoiler. One thing I'll say is that while the show overall was pretty good, it got a little too heavy-handed with its themes at times. There was the whole "not himself anymore" thing you mentioned plus all that "bla bla lifeforms" stuff in the last few eps. And yeah, Jojo's on the list. I watched the first season a couple years back, before Stardust Crusader had begun. I liked it but it didn't blow my mind or anything. Does it get better? I enjoyed Phantom Blood a lot but Battle Tendency... I don't know, it's been a while so I can't really be specific about it but I didn't like it as much. Anyway, I'll watch the rest eventually but after this long I kinda feel like I should rewatch the first season, and I'm not quite ready to do that just yet.

Definitely. I mean, I love Dragon Ball to death. The manga is a huge part of my childhood but I'd never watch the original anime run. That's why I was happy when they made the Kai recut. Made it a lot more bearable with almost all the filler cut out. Went from like 300 eps to something like 90 or so. It was incomplete when I watched it, though. Stopped after the Cell arc but apparently they went back and finished it in the years since. The crazy thing to me is that DBZ is actually "short" compared to more recent stuff like One Piece and Naruto. With such long-running shows based on still-running mangas, you run the risk of endless filler arcs like Naruto or just straight up premature death like Bleach. It just doesn't feel worth investing the time into watching them anymore. And yeah, FMA is up there as one of the greats. The Brotherhood version especially. I vaguely heard about Psycho-Pass but it was mostly about the VN. Not sure how the two relate. Might be worth looking into.

Oh man, last night I made the mistake of rewatching the first episode of One Piece on Crunchyroll. I was super into that show years ago and now I kinda want more but holy shit, the idea of getting into a show with 800+ episodes just sounds fucking exhausting to me these days. Like, who the fuck has time for that? It feels like I'd have to either stop playing video games entirely or just end up watching it for like 5 years. Otherwise, I'm close to wrapping up Parasyte: The Maxim. Might do that tonight, actually. I think it was Wally that recommended it a little while back? Overall, it's been a pretty enjoyable watch. It lost a bit of steam in the second half, so I'm hoping it starts to pick up again in the last few eps. Would be a shame for the show to have a weak ending. Not sure what to watch next, though. I've been in a pretty big anime mood lately, so I definitely want to watch another one. Other than One Piece I just mentioned, I was thinking of maybe rewatching Death Note. I never finished the manga back in the day because I got fed up of waiting for new chapters and when the anime happened I just kinda stopped watching, for some reason. Do you guys have some recommendations? Preferably stuff like action, scifi, horror and the likes. Lesser known stuff would be welcome. Parasyte sorta came out of nowhere in that I had never even heard of the manga, so it was a really nice surprise.

I see. The more pessimistic Doctor sounds like something I would probably enjoy, to be honest. Now that you guys mention it, I do vaguely remember some hints at him being a bit darker in the early eps. Disappointing to hear that the writing is hit and miss, though. I thought it was pretty spot on during most of Smith's run and is probably the main thing that made me enjoy it so much. I really loved the whole cracks in the universe thing and the silence will fall arc where almost every single episode added something to the overall narrative. That made the show a lot more enjoyable for me. Then there was all the build up to the anniversary special. It was pretty good stuff. Sounds like there's still some worthwhile stuff in the last two seasons, though. Guess I'll have to check them out soon. Thanks!

So, now that we're two seasons in, how do you guys feel about Capaldi? I kinda lost interest after a few episodes in his first season (think it was the one about Robin Hood robots or something stupid like that?), mostly because unlike Tennant and Smith he didn't seem like an obvious and immediate improvement over his predecessor. Smith's run (well, his first two seasons) made the show go from pretty good to one of my all-time favorites, so Capaldi had big shoes to fill. The reason I'm asking is because I resubbed to Netflix to watch Daredevil a couple months back and haven't watched anything other than Ant-Man since. I just noticed Doctor Who's on it, so I figured it's about time I got up to date on the show. Am I in for a disappointment or a pleasant surprise?

I imagine most people that were really interested got their code from being backers, so they wouldn't buy it. Then the reviews certainly didn't help push extra sales. Also, they've admitted their biggest mistake was developing like 10 different versions concurrently. That alone must've been a pretty insane workload, even if they outsourced a few of them. That's probably where most of the delays came from, sounds like they were spread pretty fucking thin. They probably should've gone the Shovel Knight road, where they released the core campaign first, on a single platform, and handled all the various ports and stretch goals post-launch. That being said... No offense Jack, but you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about here. Software development is long, difficult and expensive work. Game development even more so. Something that's brought up often in software development/programming is Hofstadter's law: Gotta love the recursion there. Anyway! Software development is notoriously difficult to plan and budget for, even for dudes like Inafune with decades of experience. I'm not trying to defend the final game's quality here or even argue that they did nothing wrong, but ever since I took software engineering classes comments like yours always set me off. That shit is way harder than you could possibly imagine. It's given me new found respect for game devs and made me realize just how truly fallacious that "lazy dev" notion that gets thrown around a lot actually is.

After I wrapped up Trails of Cold Steel, I didn't really know what to play next. I was going back and forth between Watch_Dogs and Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus and while both were enjoyable enough, neither really grabbed me enough to make them my main focus. I also started Danganronpa Another Episode and it's really cool but for some reason I haven't really felt drawn to it as much as the first two games. I'm always hesitant to play long RPGs close to each other because I used to get burned out on the genre pretty easily. Like, just a few years ago if an RPG lasted more than 40 or so hours I could easily leave them unfinished for months before going back to them (if I ever did). I did exactly that with Dragon Age: Origins. Fucking Deep Roads, man... Anyway, point is I guess I'm over that now because I said fuck it and ended up starting what I actually wanted to play: Shin Megami Tensei IV. About 12 hours in and so far it's a blast. Giving me serious Nocturne flashbacks, which is a very good thing. I just got to Tokyo and it's a shame that I knew about it because the lead up to it was pretty cool. I wouldn't really call it a spoiler since I've known that it was a location in the game for a while, I think it was even in some trailers or whatever. Not really a secret. But knowing I would get there early-ish in the game made it pretty easy to figure out that Would've been a pretty cool twist if it had been a complete surprise. But man, this game is fucking brutal. I had heard that the beginning was particularly rough but holy shit. Two bosses in particular will completely fucking annihilate you if you don't find out their weakness and abuse the shit out of them. I don't remember Nocturne being this bad, not even Matador and the other fiends felt quite this impossible. Hell, even basic encounters can and will wipe out your entire party on a lucky turn. It can make for some pretty serious frustration but it's been happening with decreasing frequency so hopefully it'll stop being an issue before long. I think so far I'm enjoying it more than Nocturne. I know Nocturne is generally regarded as the superior game and it's too early to really know for sure but it's certainly more refined in a lot of areas. For example, the fusion mechanics in Nocturne were just downright painful coming from Persona 4 Golden. Also, I like the overall presentation and visual style a lot more but I suppose that's entirely subjective.