Well I went in expecting a kind of children’s story thing, but there’s a lot of double entendres and boob jiggling. The goddess character has an ass window and a boob window, and the bug character that plays like your jiminey cricket makes comments about how he loves buzzing around inside her kimono etc
Okay, after my post about it a few weeks ago, I have now replayed Final Fantasy XIII for the first time in a decade or so. I even went beyond and played Final Fantasy XIII-2 for the first time. Probable long post to follow (edit: holy shit, longer than expected so sticking it behind a spoiler tag to save on scrolling for the people who don't care).
Turns out I still rather enjoy the combat in XIII once it gets going...unfortunately the joke about the game having a 20 hour tutorial before you can actually play it is pretty much true. In fact, it was 22 hours on my playthrough when I reached Chapter 9 which is when the combat got to the point I could enjoy it, and then a few more hours before I reached Chapter 11 which is when the game actually opens up and lets you do stuff and make choices.
Overall, I still think the game has tremendous pacing problems, both in gameplay and story. Gameplay problems mostly stem from taking so long to really open up at which point I feel like it really does get good. The story has some good elements but is told very poorly. I know people complain about the hallways a lot, but honestly that didn't bother me...what did was that you get three fights in those hallways and then a long-ass cutscene that is usually nothing but people talking with nothing particularly interesting happening. Also I started dreading every time it gave me another flashback to the fireworks festival because it'd be time to put down the controller for a while.
I will say that Serah is in this game a lot more than I remembered (mostly because of all the aforementioned flashbacks to the fireworks festival). I mostly remembered her being the plot macguffin that exits the plot at the very beginning. That said, she still pretty flat and I have no idea why she's in love with Snow. Snow still sucks. Hope's better than I remembered.
I ended up playing in English because a cursory search didn't find a good translation for the Japanese script (only found a mod to change terms like Sentinel to the direct Japanese translation of Defender and I didn't give a shit about that), also didn't want to give up on Aussie-accented Fang. Anyways, Lightning does emote more in the English version than I remembered. She's still not really much of a developed character, but it was better than I remembered.
I did realize that Lightning is in no way the main character of this game, though (beyond being the first in the cast to be playable). As far as the story is concerned, Vanille is the main character. Basically everything that happens in the story revolves around her (and to a slightly lesser extent Fang, but Fang's not around for like half the game), and she's even the one that does all the narrations between chapters and such. She's the one with the biggest arc that carries through to the ending (and along with Fang is the one basically the whole ending revolves around in the main party), and she's the one all the big reveals happen with. You could delete Lightning from the game and very little would change beyond needing someone else to bring Sazh along at the beginning and someone else to teach Hope how to fight.
The game's other problem is the endgame, or rather complete lack of (as well as lack of side content beyond the 64 hunts). When you beat the game, the Crystarium is probably around halfway done for all characters. At that point you can clear everything in the game except maybe 4 or 5 of the hunts and the super-turtles that are unlocked by clearing almost all the hunts. But basically all there is to do in order to max out your Crystarium and get strong enough for those last few encounters is mindlessly grind (probably on the regular form of the giant turtles as they give the best xp and drop the items you need to make the best weapon for each character). I grinded giant turtles for a while, but I got bored of it, so I put the game down with 62/64 hunts complete and moved on to the sequel.
Overall, the combat is fun once fully unlocked and the story had potential, but I think it needed more time in the oven to smooth out it's issues. Though I'm not sure if more development would have helped with the pacing since a lot of that would have been locked in.
The sequel is a mess, but it does fix several issues from the first game. First of all, it fixes the big problem with the battle system: you no longer get an instant game over if the character you're controlling dies, and you can now switch characters in battle. Additionally, no more hallways and the game opens up pretty quickly to allow you to visit different areas and do side quests. Also they had far less cutscene budget so you aren't interrupted every three fights with a bunch of talking.
Unfortunately, they brought back random encounters in a rather clunky way. Now instead of enemies being on the field like the last game, there will just randomly be a lightning bolt and enemies will appear around you. Then you have to try and whack the enemy with your sword before the enemy touches you in order to get a preemptive strike, except your character does an awkward forward lunge with the sword that can easily make it go past smaller enemies which is frustrating. Not to mention it disables interacting with anything when enemies appear and they have a tendency to appear at the last second right when you reach that chest or chocobo.
They also took away your third character, and instead you train monsters to fill that slot. Except without a lot of grinding for materials to upgrade them, they generally won't be as good as an actual character would have been in that slot.
Someone at Square also apparently didn't like how powerful you could get in the first game, and they nerfed the shit out of everything. Stats are way lower, no longer can you have HP in the tens of thousands. You can still equip 4 accessories, but now they use a weight system and anything good will take up almost all the weight points by itself. The player characters also can't learn some of the most beneficial buffs (like Brave and Faith) and you have to hunt down monsters that can cast those and put them in your party if you want, and nobody learns Haste so you can't cast that at all outside of accessories that either cast it at the beginning of battle or when you get to critical health. Pre-emptive attacks were also heavily nerfed though they were probably a bit overpowered in the last game.
It's also missing a good limit break equivalent. The first game had the summons and other powerful things you could spend TP on like Quake. All the TP actions are gone in this one, and the only thing to replace it is the special move of your monster party member, and a lot of those are just regular attacks that aren't really comparable to a tide-turning limit break or "oh shit" button (to be fair a few are, but you need to hunt those down).
The Crystarium is a straight downgrade from the last game, and also made worse because there are wrong ways to level up and absolutely no respec option.
The save system also has problems. The auto-save doesn't have it's own slot, it just saves over whatever slot you most recently used. You also can only pick a different slot when you're in the navigation menu before going to a field. Once you're in a field, you only save to your most recently used slot, which your auto-save is also going to save to.
The story is also a hot mess and really shouldn't be a sequel to XIII at all. Thematically it doesn't link at all, and honestly kind of tarnishes the good points of the plot from the first one. The cast from the first game is barely present (some of which only getting a single scene), and that includes Lightning (who is on the logo for this game). Though to be fair, Lightning does get to be the one doing the narration this time, even though she's not actually part of the story.
Instead we get her younger sister Serah as one of the two protagonists. Great, they can develop her some now since she was mostly a chunk of crystal last game outside of the flashbacks. Except no, still flat and doesn't get to contribute anything to the plot. Can't even get into her relationship with Snow because he apparently left some time ago and only appears in one area of the game later on. The real plot is about the other protagonist, Noel, who is from a post-apocalyptic future where he was the last human alive (yet somehow still has an immaculately woven Kingdom Hearts cosplay outfit instead of the rags or Mad Max outfit you might expect for such a backstory). It's all about time travel and fighting this immortal dude who wants to destroy time and blah blah, it's all nonsense.
Aside from reusing art assets, there was no reason for this story to be the sequel to Final Fantasy XIII. Overall, I don't think gaining the ability to switch your character in combat and the few other plusses are worth it and would just stick to the first game despite it's pacing issues.
I don't know if I'll bother with the third one, as it continues the plot mess from the second one and completely abandons the combat system that was basically the reason I decided to play these now.
tldr: XIII is better than I remembered but still flawed, XIII-2 fixes some of those flaws but is an overall worse product.
Lastly, over 130 hours combined playtime between those two games and I still have no idea why Serah is in love with Snow.
The divest-or-ban law aimed at TikTok is also taking down other ByteDance-linked apps, including the popular card game Marvel Snap. The app suddenly cut off access Saturday night, seemingly without warning, surprising gamers who weren’t aware of its connection to ByteDance.
The card game battler set in the Marvel universe is developed by Second Dinner, which is based in California. But the game is published by Nuverse, a company owned by ByteDance. As a result, it’s subject to the same shutdown order.
actually how is this going to affect games like genshin impact? does mihoyo have some legal status that lets it avoid the ban? wouldn't a ton of netease / tencent products get caught by this?
alright, so the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (a.k.a. PAFACA) bans "foreign adversary controlled applications"
the definition of that is any website or app made by
ByteDance, Ltd.
TikTok
a subsidiary or successor of the above
an entity controlled (directly or indirectly) by the above
however, it also includes any company that
is at least 20% controlled by a person is in a foreign adversary (currently China, Russia, North Korea, & Iran)
lets a user make an account or profile to generate, share, and view text, images, videos, real-time communications, or similar
has more than 1,000,000 monthly users
lets 1 or more users make content that others can see
lets 1 or more users view content made by other users
is not primarily about product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews
is determined by the President to be a threat to national security
besides Genshin, this potentially hits things like Epic Games (Tencent has a 35% stake) - hell, if they go after Tencent that potentially means that the US government will ban Discord (stake unknown)
Path of Exile lets you chat with other users. PoE is made by Grinding Gear Games, which Tencent has an 80% stake in.
Larian's 30% controlled by Tencent, but doesn't let you chat with other users... unless you play multiplayer!
Riot Games is wholly owned by Tencent, ofc. So is the owner of Digital Extremes. Clash of Clans creator Inflexion Games is 84.3% owned by Tencent. They've also got full ownership of Funcom, makers of Conan Exile and The Secret World.
If they decide to go after Tencent and blanket ban everything they have a 20% stake in, that would rock the industry to its core.
(Fortunately, though, it seems like Trump has decided to take this as an opportunity to do a huge PR stunt and cancel the Tiktok ban before he even formally becomes President? Yay, I guess???)
Oh, I forgot to talk about the minigames in Final Fantasy XIII-2.
Basically whoever designed the clock puzzles, quiz minigame, and slot machine seriously has an axe to grind with people who play video games (which, you know...fair). The sheer amount of malice that went into those minigames is palpable. This designer hates you for playing this minigame and they want to make sure you are utterly miserable.
is determined by the President to be a threat to national security
ah, that's the one that just lets them apply it selectively to whatever they want to kill off
Technically that's the rule that "limits" it from arbitrarily killing an insane number of apps since meeting the other requirements isn't that hard, but yes, it does mean that there's now a sword of damocles that lets the president force an app to be sold or stop operating in the US.
There are a lot of extremely pathetic things about basically everything Musk does, but for my money the most uniquely pathetic thing is his insistence on trying to make Polytopia a thing.
Like, Polytopia is a reasonably competent, hyper-simplified 4X game for mobile devices. It's not reinventing the wheel, it's not particularly deep, it's the kind of game you pick up and play for a bit, enjoy, and put down to never think about again. It's a game that nobody would recognize if they hadn't played it and that nobody who played it would think requires a ton of skill.
And yet Musk has been trying to make it a thing for literal years; he says it's a better game than Chess, he talks about missing major events to play it more in his book, and now he's getting Grimes to brag about his skill at the game for him on Twitter. It's the one game I actually do believe he plays a lot and plays well, in a big-fish-in-a-small-pond sense, because the only reason to keep talking about it for years is if it genuinely strokes his ego to stomp a particular mobile game, and he keeps doing it because nobody actually gives enough of a shit about what games he recommends to try it out and realize it's not that deep
I am constantly baffled by Musk's profound inability to perceive his own (lack of) skill at literally everything. He has, like, a generalized case of Dunning-Kruger.
I bet it would do him a world of good to buckle down and learn an actual skill from the ground up. Doesn't even matter what skill. Knit a scarf, build a birdhouse, put a flat pack desk together, I don't care - just, something where he has to actually do the thing instead of paying/bullying people into doing it for him.
I have a pet theory that humans are friction machines - we need friction, challenge, a certain amount of resistance to actually function at a healthy level. (Note, this is not the same as suffering).
Which is why the rich are so bug nuts crazy, because they basically eliminate any actual resistance or friction in their lives.
There are a lot of extremely pathetic things about basically everything Musk does, but for my money the most uniquely pathetic thing is his insistence on trying to make Polytopia a thing.
Like, Polytopia is a reasonably competent, hyper-simplified 4X game for mobile devices. It's not reinventing the wheel, it's not particularly deep, it's the kind of game you pick up and play for a bit, enjoy, and put down to never think about again. It's a game that nobody would recognize if they hadn't played it and that nobody who played it would think requires a ton of skill.
And yet Musk has been trying to make it a thing for literal years; he says it's a better game than Chess, he talks about missing major events to play it more in his book, and now he's getting Grimes to brag about his skill at the game for him on Twitter. It's the one game I actually do believe he plays a lot and plays well, in a big-fish-in-a-small-pond sense, because the only reason to keep talking about it for years is if it genuinely strokes his ego to stomp a particular mobile game, and he keeps doing it because nobody actually gives enough of a shit about what games he recommends to try it out and realize it's not that deep
I am constantly baffled by Musk's profound inability to perceive his own (lack of) skill at literally everything. He has, like, a generalized case of Dunning-Kruger.
I bet it would do him a world of good to buckle down and learn an actual skill from the ground up. Doesn't even matter what skill. Knit a scarf, build a birdhouse, put a flat pack desk together, I don't care - just, something where he has to actually do the thing instead of paying/bullying people into doing it for him.
I have a pet theory that humans are friction machines - we need friction, challenge, a certain amount of resistance to actually function at a healthy level. (Note, this is not the same as suffering).
Which is why the rich are so bug nuts crazy, because they basically eliminate any actual resistance or friction in their lives.
If you can't get your dopamine the normal way, by overcoming small everyday challenges, then obviously you have no choice but to get it by murdering the poor.
There are a lot of extremely pathetic things about basically everything Musk does, but for my money the most uniquely pathetic thing is his insistence on trying to make Polytopia a thing.
Like, Polytopia is a reasonably competent, hyper-simplified 4X game for mobile devices. It's not reinventing the wheel, it's not particularly deep, it's the kind of game you pick up and play for a bit, enjoy, and put down to never think about again. It's a game that nobody would recognize if they hadn't played it and that nobody who played it would think requires a ton of skill.
And yet Musk has been trying to make it a thing for literal years; he says it's a better game than Chess, he talks about missing major events to play it more in his book, and now he's getting Grimes to brag about his skill at the game for him on Twitter. It's the one game I actually do believe he plays a lot and plays well, in a big-fish-in-a-small-pond sense, because the only reason to keep talking about it for years is if it genuinely strokes his ego to stomp a particular mobile game, and he keeps doing it because nobody actually gives enough of a shit about what games he recommends to try it out and realize it's not that deep
I am constantly baffled by Musk's profound inability to perceive his own (lack of) skill at literally everything. He has, like, a generalized case of Dunning-Kruger.
I bet it would do him a world of good to buckle down and learn an actual skill from the ground up. Doesn't even matter what skill. Knit a scarf, build a birdhouse, put a flat pack desk together, I don't care - just, something where he has to actually do the thing instead of paying/bullying people into doing it for him.
I have a pet theory that humans are friction machines - we need friction, challenge, a certain amount of resistance to actually function at a healthy level. (Note, this is not the same as suffering).
Which is why the rich are so bug nuts crazy, because they basically eliminate any actual resistance or friction in their lives.
If you can't get your dopamine the normal way, by overcoming small everyday challenges, then obviously you have no choice but to get it by murdering the poor.
is determined by the President to be a threat to national security
ah, that's the one that just lets them apply it selectively to whatever they want to kill off
Technically that's the rule that "limits" it from arbitrarily killing an insane number of apps since meeting the other requirements isn't that hard, but yes, it does mean that there's now a sword of damocles that lets the president force an app to be sold or stop operating in the US.
This is why Trump pushed for this his first term. This is exactly the type of thing he likes to have in his toolbox when "negotiating". We have a mountain of evidence that tariffs don't work, but he has a hard on for them for the same reason.
There are a lot of extremely pathetic things about basically everything Musk does, but for my money the most uniquely pathetic thing is his insistence on trying to make Polytopia a thing.
Like, Polytopia is a reasonably competent, hyper-simplified 4X game for mobile devices. It's not reinventing the wheel, it's not particularly deep, it's the kind of game you pick up and play for a bit, enjoy, and put down to never think about again. It's a game that nobody would recognize if they hadn't played it and that nobody who played it would think requires a ton of skill.
And yet Musk has been trying to make it a thing for literal years; he says it's a better game than Chess, he talks about missing major events to play it more in his book, and now he's getting Grimes to brag about his skill at the game for him on Twitter. It's the one game I actually do believe he plays a lot and plays well, in a big-fish-in-a-small-pond sense, because the only reason to keep talking about it for years is if it genuinely strokes his ego to stomp a particular mobile game, and he keeps doing it because nobody actually gives enough of a shit about what games he recommends to try it out and realize it's not that deep
I am constantly baffled by Musk's profound inability to perceive his own (lack of) skill at literally everything. He has, like, a generalized case of Dunning-Kruger.
I bet it would do him a world of good to buckle down and learn an actual skill from the ground up. Doesn't even matter what skill. Knit a scarf, build a birdhouse, put a flat pack desk together, I don't care - just, something where he has to actually do the thing instead of paying/bullying people into doing it for him.
I have a pet theory that humans are friction machines - we need friction, challenge, a certain amount of resistance to actually function at a healthy level. (Note, this is not the same as suffering).
Which is why the rich are so bug nuts crazy, because they basically eliminate any actual resistance or friction in their lives.
If you can't get your dopamine the normal way, by overcoming small everyday challenges, then obviously you have no choice but to get it by murdering the poor.
I am a bit more inclined to play PoE2 now. I played PoE for a bit and had fun, and the sequel seems to be getting good attention.
It's good! Not gonna claim there arent issues, but even the post Christmas, we just got back to work patch showed the devs were not only actively listening, but making very sensible, healthy choices.
Very much looking forward to when they do a big content drop, which should come with a new league & economy.
Which is kinda crazy given there's already a ton of content in here. I've racked up a shameful number of hours already, and while I've seen most of the end game content, I have barely scratched what you can do with builds.
I also really appreciate the design of the ascension classes - they're sub-class for the main classes, but they're all pretty generalist in that they give you some powerful toys, but don't dictate over much about how you use those toys. Which really enhances the build variety
the problem is that the tiktok ban instantly proved it had no teeth as long as you say you won’t sell lol
now, to be fair, the tiktok ban also has the transition to a new administration making it all kind of murky
but yeah the entire law is just a huge own goal for everyone involved, all banning tiktok managed to do is cause huge problems and also make americans move to a different Chinese-owned app literally named Little Red Book* (Xiǎohóngshū) so it's not like the "china's stealing our data/propagandizing our youth" problem went away
(* ironically the name seems to be unrelated to the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung and instead is a reference to Bain & Company and Stanford???)
There are a lot of extremely pathetic things about basically everything Musk does, but for my money the most uniquely pathetic thing is his insistence on trying to make Polytopia a thing.
Like, Polytopia is a reasonably competent, hyper-simplified 4X game for mobile devices. It's not reinventing the wheel, it's not particularly deep, it's the kind of game you pick up and play for a bit, enjoy, and put down to never think about again. It's a game that nobody would recognize if they hadn't played it and that nobody who played it would think requires a ton of skill.
And yet Musk has been trying to make it a thing for literal years; he says it's a better game than Chess, he talks about missing major events to play it more in his book, and now he's getting Grimes to brag about his skill at the game for him on Twitter. It's the one game I actually do believe he plays a lot and plays well, in a big-fish-in-a-small-pond sense, because the only reason to keep talking about it for years is if it genuinely strokes his ego to stomp a particular mobile game, and he keeps doing it because nobody actually gives enough of a shit about what games he recommends to try it out and realize it's not that deep
I am constantly baffled by Musk's profound inability to perceive his own (lack of) skill at literally everything. He has, like, a generalized case of Dunning-Kruger.
I bet it would do him a world of good to buckle down and learn an actual skill from the ground up. Doesn't even matter what skill. Knit a scarf, build a birdhouse, put a flat pack desk together, I don't care - just, something where he has to actually do the thing instead of paying/bullying people into doing it for him.
I have a pet theory that humans are friction machines - we need friction, challenge, a certain amount of resistance to actually function at a healthy level. (Note, this is not the same as suffering).
Which is why the rich are so bug nuts crazy, because they basically eliminate any actual resistance or friction in their lives.
If you can't get your dopamine the normal way, by overcoming small everyday challenges, then obviously you have no choice but to get it by murdering the poor.
Y'all are getting dopamine?
I function mainly on spite, but I do function.
Sort of. Most days.
Y'all are functioning?
+2
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Washed up on the shore of the Isle of Neasied, you must set out to find your father and explore the isle's many mysteries. Wield the Legendary Holy Sword Endu and take flight across an isle of mystery and danger in this retro-inspired Action RPG.
Been playing some of the world of Warcraft battle royale mode. It's kinda fun.
it shares a lot of DNA with the battle royale Spellbreak, which was a team acquired by Blizzard back in mid 2022
Yeah? I think I vaguely remember hearing about that game though I never played it myself
0
Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
With the unstable release of B42 for Project Zomboid, the mods, they are healing. Mods are slowly getting updated for the new game version. Just tried a spawn in the prison, like I used to sometimes. In the past when you spawned in a building it removed all the zombies from that one building and since the prison is one huge building you had a fairly easy start with some good starter gear to find.
Not sure what they changed but first spawn I was inside a prison cell with three zombies and was intimidate killed. Second attempt I managed to fight them off but the prison was FILLED. Zombies in all the cells trying to crash their way out. Zombie guards, the works. Luckily a long metal pole, like found on the ground when a zombie breaks down a cell door, makes a very good weapon, and I managed to loot the guard locker room. This was helped by somehow setting a building alarm off in the lower level of the cell block then doubling back to the exit on the upper level as the alarm drew most of the zombies in the prison. The main armory was bugged or something because there were no weapon or gun related spawns in any of the containers. However a random flatbed trailer in the parking lot had two shotguns in the back, lol Kentucky am I right? And I found the key to a nice functional utility pickup truck and now I'm cruising.
When I'm feeling stuck or hopeless, writing things down always seems to help. Like the original, Kind Words 2 is an opportunity to extend that kindness to yourself and others. "Sometimes all you need are a few kind words." https://store.steampowered.com/app/21... #cozygames #kindness #cozygamer
has anyone played this or the previous game? I'm wondering how this system works - like its a game that's encouraging people to open up and talk about things that are personal, related to their mental health, and possibly things that could negatively affect them if expressed publicly
but then in response, you're supposed to receive "kind words" back, which are written by actual people, which feels like it opens up the door to all kinds of potential abuse
is there a moderation team that screens messages? is there some kind of keyword filter that flags speech to make sure that like... a conservative christian and a radical atheist don't get matched up? like even aside from deliberate trolls, how do the devs deal with messages from people who sincerely don't agree with your viewpoints, or thing your very existence is something that needs to be wiped out?
like it seems like it's actually doing really well, and that the people using it are happy, but the entire specifics of how the game functions set off every red flag imaginable for me
Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
So the true music mod is one of the big ones I was waiting for as I love running around listening to period music. However so far, while I have found a walkman, I have only found a single cassette, a Hank Williams song, which, lol Kentucky?
Austin Walker (you might have heard of him) is publishing the Ashcan Edition of his TTRPG Realis today
+9
Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
I am saved! Found a cassette for Starman.
Also huge QOL thing, sometimes purses spawn in containers and these have purse like items in them. I say this because I found a purse in the rosewood police station locker room and it had a key for the whole police station inside! Previously you'd have to lure zombies inside and kill tons of them hoping a key would spawn so you could get into the armory.
Washed up on the shore of the Isle of Neasied, you must set out to find your father and explore the isle's many mysteries. Wield the Legendary Holy Sword Endu and take flight across an isle of mystery and danger in this retro-inspired Action RPG.
oh, queen's domain, king's field, I get it! took me a minute
how lovely that multiple king's fieldlikes are showing up from indie devs
When I'm feeling stuck or hopeless, writing things down always seems to help. Like the original, Kind Words 2 is an opportunity to extend that kindness to yourself and others. "Sometimes all you need are a few kind words." https://store.steampowered.com/app/21... #cozygames #kindness #cozygamer
has anyone played this or the previous game? I'm wondering how this system works - like its a game that's encouraging people to open up and talk about things that are personal, related to their mental health, and possibly things that could negatively affect them if expressed publicly
but then in response, you're supposed to receive "kind words" back, which are written by actual people, which feels like it opens up the door to all kinds of potential abuse
is there a moderation team that screens messages? is there some kind of keyword filter that flags speech to make sure that like... a conservative christian and a radical atheist don't get matched up? like even aside from deliberate trolls, how do the devs deal with messages from people who sincerely don't agree with your viewpoints, or thing your very existence is something that needs to be wiped out?
like it seems like it's actually doing really well, and that the people using it are happy, but the entire specifics of how the game functions set off every red flag imaginable for me
I think I got Kind Words in a humble bundle and even used it to vent some grievances and seemed to get kind words back. I'm unsure what kind of moderation is in place as surely there needs to be or the community is mostly of cozy folks so the abuse gets shut down, but it did seem a nice and chill place to see these sorts of things. Nice music too.
Posts
...go on.
I really wish I could disable the sex scenes in huniepop because the gameplay is that good.
need more match 3 (hope aurion has more updates)
anyway
huniepop > mirror > puzzle quest 2
Overall, I still think the game has tremendous pacing problems, both in gameplay and story. Gameplay problems mostly stem from taking so long to really open up at which point I feel like it really does get good. The story has some good elements but is told very poorly. I know people complain about the hallways a lot, but honestly that didn't bother me...what did was that you get three fights in those hallways and then a long-ass cutscene that is usually nothing but people talking with nothing particularly interesting happening. Also I started dreading every time it gave me another flashback to the fireworks festival because it'd be time to put down the controller for a while.
I will say that Serah is in this game a lot more than I remembered (mostly because of all the aforementioned flashbacks to the fireworks festival). I mostly remembered her being the plot macguffin that exits the plot at the very beginning. That said, she still pretty flat and I have no idea why she's in love with Snow. Snow still sucks. Hope's better than I remembered.
I ended up playing in English because a cursory search didn't find a good translation for the Japanese script (only found a mod to change terms like Sentinel to the direct Japanese translation of Defender and I didn't give a shit about that), also didn't want to give up on Aussie-accented Fang. Anyways, Lightning does emote more in the English version than I remembered. She's still not really much of a developed character, but it was better than I remembered.
I did realize that Lightning is in no way the main character of this game, though (beyond being the first in the cast to be playable). As far as the story is concerned, Vanille is the main character. Basically everything that happens in the story revolves around her (and to a slightly lesser extent Fang, but Fang's not around for like half the game), and she's even the one that does all the narrations between chapters and such. She's the one with the biggest arc that carries through to the ending (and along with Fang is the one basically the whole ending revolves around in the main party), and she's the one all the big reveals happen with. You could delete Lightning from the game and very little would change beyond needing someone else to bring Sazh along at the beginning and someone else to teach Hope how to fight.
The game's other problem is the endgame, or rather complete lack of (as well as lack of side content beyond the 64 hunts). When you beat the game, the Crystarium is probably around halfway done for all characters. At that point you can clear everything in the game except maybe 4 or 5 of the hunts and the super-turtles that are unlocked by clearing almost all the hunts. But basically all there is to do in order to max out your Crystarium and get strong enough for those last few encounters is mindlessly grind (probably on the regular form of the giant turtles as they give the best xp and drop the items you need to make the best weapon for each character). I grinded giant turtles for a while, but I got bored of it, so I put the game down with 62/64 hunts complete and moved on to the sequel.
Overall, the combat is fun once fully unlocked and the story had potential, but I think it needed more time in the oven to smooth out it's issues. Though I'm not sure if more development would have helped with the pacing since a lot of that would have been locked in.
The sequel is a mess, but it does fix several issues from the first game. First of all, it fixes the big problem with the battle system: you no longer get an instant game over if the character you're controlling dies, and you can now switch characters in battle. Additionally, no more hallways and the game opens up pretty quickly to allow you to visit different areas and do side quests. Also they had far less cutscene budget so you aren't interrupted every three fights with a bunch of talking.
Unfortunately, they brought back random encounters in a rather clunky way. Now instead of enemies being on the field like the last game, there will just randomly be a lightning bolt and enemies will appear around you. Then you have to try and whack the enemy with your sword before the enemy touches you in order to get a preemptive strike, except your character does an awkward forward lunge with the sword that can easily make it go past smaller enemies which is frustrating. Not to mention it disables interacting with anything when enemies appear and they have a tendency to appear at the last second right when you reach that chest or chocobo.
They also took away your third character, and instead you train monsters to fill that slot. Except without a lot of grinding for materials to upgrade them, they generally won't be as good as an actual character would have been in that slot.
Someone at Square also apparently didn't like how powerful you could get in the first game, and they nerfed the shit out of everything. Stats are way lower, no longer can you have HP in the tens of thousands. You can still equip 4 accessories, but now they use a weight system and anything good will take up almost all the weight points by itself. The player characters also can't learn some of the most beneficial buffs (like Brave and Faith) and you have to hunt down monsters that can cast those and put them in your party if you want, and nobody learns Haste so you can't cast that at all outside of accessories that either cast it at the beginning of battle or when you get to critical health. Pre-emptive attacks were also heavily nerfed though they were probably a bit overpowered in the last game.
It's also missing a good limit break equivalent. The first game had the summons and other powerful things you could spend TP on like Quake. All the TP actions are gone in this one, and the only thing to replace it is the special move of your monster party member, and a lot of those are just regular attacks that aren't really comparable to a tide-turning limit break or "oh shit" button (to be fair a few are, but you need to hunt those down).
The Crystarium is a straight downgrade from the last game, and also made worse because there are wrong ways to level up and absolutely no respec option.
The save system also has problems. The auto-save doesn't have it's own slot, it just saves over whatever slot you most recently used. You also can only pick a different slot when you're in the navigation menu before going to a field. Once you're in a field, you only save to your most recently used slot, which your auto-save is also going to save to.
The story is also a hot mess and really shouldn't be a sequel to XIII at all. Thematically it doesn't link at all, and honestly kind of tarnishes the good points of the plot from the first one. The cast from the first game is barely present (some of which only getting a single scene), and that includes Lightning (who is on the logo for this game). Though to be fair, Lightning does get to be the one doing the narration this time, even though she's not actually part of the story.
Instead we get her younger sister Serah as one of the two protagonists. Great, they can develop her some now since she was mostly a chunk of crystal last game outside of the flashbacks. Except no, still flat and doesn't get to contribute anything to the plot. Can't even get into her relationship with Snow because he apparently left some time ago and only appears in one area of the game later on. The real plot is about the other protagonist, Noel, who is from a post-apocalyptic future where he was the last human alive (yet somehow still has an immaculately woven Kingdom Hearts cosplay outfit instead of the rags or Mad Max outfit you might expect for such a backstory). It's all about time travel and fighting this immortal dude who wants to destroy time and blah blah, it's all nonsense.
Aside from reusing art assets, there was no reason for this story to be the sequel to Final Fantasy XIII. Overall, I don't think gaining the ability to switch your character in combat and the few other plusses are worth it and would just stick to the first game despite it's pacing issues.
I don't know if I'll bother with the third one, as it continues the plot mess from the second one and completely abandons the combat system that was basically the reason I decided to play these now.
tldr: XIII is better than I remembered but still flawed, XIII-2 fixes some of those flaws but is an overall worse product.
Lastly, over 130 hours combined playtime between those two games and I still have no idea why Serah is in love with Snow.
alright, so the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (a.k.a. PAFACA) bans "foreign adversary controlled applications"
the definition of that is any website or app made by
- ByteDance, Ltd.
- TikTok
- a subsidiary or successor of the above
- an entity controlled (directly or indirectly) by the above
however, it also includes any company thatbesides Genshin, this potentially hits things like Epic Games (Tencent has a 35% stake) - hell, if they go after Tencent that potentially means that the US government will ban Discord (stake unknown)
Path of Exile lets you chat with other users. PoE is made by Grinding Gear Games, which Tencent has an 80% stake in.
Larian's 30% controlled by Tencent, but doesn't let you chat with other users... unless you play multiplayer!
Riot Games is wholly owned by Tencent, ofc. So is the owner of Digital Extremes. Clash of Clans creator Inflexion Games is 84.3% owned by Tencent. They've also got full ownership of Funcom, makers of Conan Exile and The Secret World.
If they decide to go after Tencent and blanket ban everything they have a 20% stake in, that would rock the industry to its core.
(Fortunately, though, it seems like Trump has decided to take this as an opportunity to do a huge PR stunt and cancel the Tiktok ban before he even formally becomes President? Yay, I guess???)
aka the government bans your app unless you kick up a percentage to trump
ah, that's the one that just lets them apply it selectively to whatever they want to kill off
Basically whoever designed the clock puzzles, quiz minigame, and slot machine seriously has an axe to grind with people who play video games (which, you know...fair). The sheer amount of malice that went into those minigames is palpable. This designer hates you for playing this minigame and they want to make sure you are utterly miserable.
Technically that's the rule that "limits" it from arbitrarily killing an insane number of apps since meeting the other requirements isn't that hard, but yes, it does mean that there's now a sword of damocles that lets the president force an app to be sold or stop operating in the US.
I have a pet theory that humans are friction machines - we need friction, challenge, a certain amount of resistance to actually function at a healthy level. (Note, this is not the same as suffering).
Which is why the rich are so bug nuts crazy, because they basically eliminate any actual resistance or friction in their lives.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
If you can't get your dopamine the normal way, by overcoming small everyday challenges, then obviously you have no choice but to get it by murdering the poor.
Y'all are getting dopamine?
This is why Trump pushed for this his first term. This is exactly the type of thing he likes to have in his toolbox when "negotiating". We have a mountain of evidence that tariffs don't work, but he has a hard on for them for the same reason.
I function mainly on spite, but I do function.
Sort of. Most days.
I got the dope lung in the dopamines
It's good! Not gonna claim there arent issues, but even the post Christmas, we just got back to work patch showed the devs were not only actively listening, but making very sensible, healthy choices.
Very much looking forward to when they do a big content drop, which should come with a new league & economy.
Which is kinda crazy given there's already a ton of content in here. I've racked up a shameful number of hours already, and while I've seen most of the end game content, I have barely scratched what you can do with builds.
I also really appreciate the design of the ascension classes - they're sub-class for the main classes, but they're all pretty generalist in that they give you some powerful toys, but don't dictate over much about how you use those toys. Which really enhances the build variety
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
it shares a lot of DNA with the battle royale Spellbreak, which was a team acquired by Blizzard back in mid 2022
now, to be fair, the tiktok ban also has the transition to a new administration making it all kind of murky
but yeah the entire law is just a huge own goal for everyone involved, all banning tiktok managed to do is cause huge problems and also make americans move to a different Chinese-owned app literally named Little Red Book* (Xiǎohóngshū) so it's not like the "china's stealing our data/propagandizing our youth" problem went away
(* ironically the name seems to be unrelated to the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung and instead is a reference to Bain & Company and Stanford???)
Y'all are functioning?
Yeah? I think I vaguely remember hearing about that game though I never played it myself
Not sure what they changed but first spawn I was inside a prison cell with three zombies and was intimidate killed. Second attempt I managed to fight them off but the prison was FILLED. Zombies in all the cells trying to crash their way out. Zombie guards, the works. Luckily a long metal pole, like found on the ground when a zombie breaks down a cell door, makes a very good weapon, and I managed to loot the guard locker room. This was helped by somehow setting a building alarm off in the lower level of the cell block then doubling back to the exit on the upper level as the alarm drew most of the zombies in the prison. The main armory was bugged or something because there were no weapon or gun related spawns in any of the containers. However a random flatbed trailer in the parking lot had two shotguns in the back, lol Kentucky am I right? And I found the key to a nice functional utility pickup truck and now I'm cruising.
has anyone played this or the previous game? I'm wondering how this system works - like its a game that's encouraging people to open up and talk about things that are personal, related to their mental health, and possibly things that could negatively affect them if expressed publicly
but then in response, you're supposed to receive "kind words" back, which are written by actual people, which feels like it opens up the door to all kinds of potential abuse
is there a moderation team that screens messages? is there some kind of keyword filter that flags speech to make sure that like... a conservative christian and a radical atheist don't get matched up? like even aside from deliberate trolls, how do the devs deal with messages from people who sincerely don't agree with your viewpoints, or thing your very existence is something that needs to be wiped out?
like it seems like it's actually doing really well, and that the people using it are happy, but the entire specifics of how the game functions set off every red flag imaginable for me
https://thecalcutec.itch.io/realis
Austin Walker (you might have heard of him) is publishing the Ashcan Edition of his TTRPG Realis today
Also huge QOL thing, sometimes purses spawn in containers and these have purse like items in them. I say this because I found a purse in the rosewood police station locker room and it had a key for the whole police station inside! Previously you'd have to lure zombies inside and kill tons of them hoping a key would spawn so you could get into the armory.
Same goes for medical staff.
Unfortunately in Zomboid most of these people in 1993 locked their cars and then lost the keys before becoming undead.
but not before guzzling down all the gasoline in their tank with a straw
oh, queen's domain, king's field, I get it! took me a minute
how lovely that multiple king's fieldlikes are showing up from indie devs
I think I got Kind Words in a humble bundle and even used it to vent some grievances and seemed to get kind words back. I'm unsure what kind of moderation is in place as surely there needs to be or the community is mostly of cozy folks so the abuse gets shut down, but it did seem a nice and chill place to see these sorts of things. Nice music too.