I've been playing through Remnant 2 and having a great time with it. I think they've hit on a great mix of combat and challenge. Plus I was pleasantly surprised to find that the writing, especially for the lore, was quite engaging (the intro doesn't set a high bar tbh). Still in progress for the game, so no spoilers please, but what do you think?

I'm a little over halfway through and I really have to force myself to keep playing it. Some of it is really cool and a lot of it drives me crazy. Sorry to rant a bit but a lot of the discourse online is extremely positive and I just wanted to let this out.

• So many cutscenes. They're pretty good cutscenes. The acting is largely very good, most characters are really enjoyable (although maybe one day FF will realize that antagonists can be multifaceted and not just generic evil badman). But so, so many hours of cutscene -- run over there -- cutscene -- go to the one map location that's unlocked -- cutscene.
• So much time wasting slow running around. Sometimes the maps are designed like a (linear) maze for apparent reason except to make it take longer to get somewhere. I see a quest marker and I just immediately "ugh" at how long it's going to take me to plod over there.
• And as a corollary to the above, exploration sucks. I learned very early on that there's no reason not to beeline to the next goal, so it makes the slow running that much worse. Dungeons are basically right out of FF XIV, which means one straight line and a very clear pattern of trash mob, trash mob, boss, rinse, repeat.
• The gear and stats are a non-entity. You go through the story, it more or less hands you periodic levels and gear. It feels like they thought including these things was obligatory, but for what they put in the game, they could have just not bothered.
• Combat is pretty fun! A little repetitive. A little samey. I wish there were more options for using all the skills you get. I have all these things I could unlock, but the very limited set of slots you get make they basically a non-option once you've picked the ones you like. The system just feels kind of half baked.
• And in that same vein, the big quick-time-event boss battles are neat too. I don't love them, because it feels a lot like I'm not playing a game anymore, but they do look pretty fantastic. Some of the latter ones go on for way too long. Just like, I was done with punching this fantastic looking beast 10 minutes ago.
• Maybe I haven't heard enough of it or listened long enough, but the music is disappointing. Which is sad because I love the tracks in XIV from the same composer. So much here is just ambient or otherwise underwhelming. A bunch of critical moments are just remixes on the classic theme, which is nice, but not really selling me on the new score overall.

I'm probably going to stick through to the end (slowly, with many breaks for Dave the Diver), at the very least because it was so expensive. I just wish it were better.

Roguelikes have a special place in my heart. When you know that your character is mortal, the stakes feel so much more real, and your progress feel so much more earned. You can’t second-guess the level design, because random, and sometimes things are simply not unfair, like when you get transformed into a cute mushroom, while your otherwise generic foe get transformed into a god. I consider unfairness, uncertaincy and chaos to be core gameplay components.

Here’s some roguelikes I liked, in no particular order:

Inscryption
Sort of like Slay the Spire with retro aestetics combined with the gritty feel of the SAW franchise. The most atmospheric and foreboding deckbuilder I've ever played. It is sort of a meta-game where you play a retro computer game in which you play a tabletop roleplaying game with a deranged dungeonmaster.

Noita
Looks like a rather generic pixelart side-view dungeoncrawl, but beneath the humble surface lurks Finnish folklore, a revolutionary physics engine and an insanely versatile magic system, likely the best in any game. The game is vast, both in sense of game world but also the numbers of monsters, spells, perks and secrets. I consider this the best roguelike, full stop.

Don't Starve
Craft to survive in an unforgiving wilderness, battling wildlife, hunger cold and insanity. Having to constantly collect resources makes this game a bit on the grindy side, but the hand-drawn artwork and a rich world to explore and unlock makes this stay fresh.

Jupiter Hell
This, the successor to DRL (Doom Roguelike), is the only classic roguelike I could ever get into. The top-notch visuals makes me literally forget that I'm playing a grid-based turn-based rogue-clone. Still, the game is rather lacking in variation, and there's no lore or story choices. While I think this is by design, the DOOM roots and whatnot, I'm missing the sense of exploration and wonder found in other roguelikes. But even with that, the game is cool and ever so dark, and there's quite a lot of depth despite the simple controls.

FTL
Simplistic and neat pixelart space exploration game. The meat of the game is space combat in real time with pause, between which you plan your route on a node-based overworld and make various choices. The game, while cozy, is quite intense. You're trying to escape a vastly superior fleet while fighting off incoming attacks and trying to not run out of fuel while hopefully improving your ship to survive as the stakes rises. Every choice you make feels like a life or death decision. The fights offers a lot of different tactics. There's various ships to unlock by completing various missions. The one downside is that you have seen all the different encounters way before you have everything unlocked, but the mod FTL Multiverse adds a lot of new content.

Into the Breach
Simple tactical turnbased on 8x8 fields, by the folks behind FTL. The main gimmick is that you can see how the enemies are going to attack in their turn, and try to counter it. This works surprisingly well and offers a lot of depth.

Depth of Extinction
Underwater turnbased tactical. The game feels like watching a cheap action movie from the eighties. Sometimes the missions can feel a bit samey, and the underwater setting could be more in forefront but this doesn't stop the game from being quite a lot of fun. I'm hardly an expert here, but I've heard people who prides themselves of their expertice at turn-based tactical gaming giving this one a lot of praise.

Retromancer
Arena-shooter with a very stylish retro aestetics which doesn't confuse you in the fast-paced chaos. This, combined with a RPG fantasy theme really make this stand out from the other twin-stick offerings. This is a game I consider a spiritual successor to the original twin stick shooter, Robotron 2084. Of course, you need to play the Hunter, the other characters doesn't have the Robotron-trademark mashine gun fire. There's a dash function which is quite handy when you're about to be cornered. There is not really any character building, although by scoring enough points you can unlock various pickups. I guess it is designed for local multiplayer (there's four characters to choose from) but I haven't tried this. Plays excellent with controller.

The Wrath's Den
This is basically Dungeonkeeper, but simplified into a turnbased pixelart game with keyboard controls. You use space to switch between minions, arrow keys to move them, X to do various actions. Besides the random room choices, everything follow simple strict mechanics, which sometimes requires a bit of observation to grasp. The one major downside is that you cannot save your game. Much suck! But other than that, this humble little game is quite easy to fall in love with.

I just finished it today and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what parts I enjoyed.

The rest of the book felt very preachy and a lot of it felt unnecessary. I don't think I liked a single character in the book. They all felt like caricatures and not how people would genuinely act or respond to the events happening in the book. Almost every single action taken by every single character felt forced to fit a narrative.

I cannot fathom why this won a Hugo award other than the fact that it was the first piece of science fiction originally written by a Chinese author in the Chinese language to win. [edit: In terms of novelty. The fact that it was originally written in Chinese has absolutely no bearing on my opinion other than possibly due to the translation the characters seemed to have no depth.]

I listened to the audio book, as I was told the names can be confusing and the audio book helped with it. I kept waiting for it to go somewhere, and when it was over I thought to myself, "that's it?"

Maybe someone can give a different perspective on it, because right now I'm just frustrated I spent money on it.

I originally decided to review this book for Tildes because I know that there are music lovers here. I made this choice before I finished the book. This is a music focused novel. People who love music will likely get a lot out of it. But the music content provides a context for a great novel.

The first half of the story focuses on two music obsessed young men who become friends. One has a strong interest in sound technology. (I'm sure that there is a more precise way to describe it but I'm not a musician. Bear with me here.) The other is a collector, focused on old Blues recordings.

Without giving away too much the plot, a new character is introduced part way in, an older Blues collector and there is a journey into the deep South to find Blues recordings and buy them from individuals who have family connections to the Blues musicians.

About two thirds of the way through reading the book, I started to wonder about recommending it without caveats. It is extremely well written and tells a compelling story. I'm glad I read it. However, there are aspects that will probably make it difficult for some people to enjoy it. Other people will, I suspect love it, for the exact same content.

Here are some aspects of the book that might need trigger/content warnings.

Violence: There is a particularly brutal police encounter among other episodes.

Revenge: Race and racism is one of several themes of the book and African American rage over mistreatment and abuse is bluntly expressed and enacted at a few points.

Narrator (and reader) lacking real time contemporaneous understanding of what is happening:
Part of the book contains content representing what might be a fever dream or a psychotic episode or a drug induced experience. Late in the book a possible supernatural/uncanny explaination is offered, but the question of why the episode is surreal is not definitively resolved.

Strong contrast and vivid descriptions of wealth vs middle class vs poverty:

Death:

As I said, I think the book is exceptionally well written and the author quite skilled. I found it compelling, interesting, entertaining, but certain parts more fascinating than enjoyable. If someone reads it, I would love to know what you think.

Here's a list of cookery books that are frequently recommended in various forums when people ask for good cookery books.

These are not in any kind of order. Please add any books that I've missed! I'm sure there are lots of great books that I haven't heard of. I wanted to link to a bookshop, but I got stuck with that so I used Wordery, unless they didn't have it in which case I link to Amazon. Some of these books have hardback and soft-cover versions, or newer editions, so go careful with the links because I just link to any version of the book. I have done no research at all into the authors or illustrators here, so if I've included people who are toxic arseholes please do let me know and I'll fix it. (This post is episode 2 of "DanBC goes down a rabbit hole and dumps the results onto Tildes").

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking - Samin Nosrat and Wendy MacNaughton.

A review from Kitchn: 8 cooks on why "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" is such a special, unlikely, hit

A lot of people love this book. Beginners say it gave them a bit more confidence, and good home cooks say it helped elevate their cooking by giving them usable information.

How to Cook Everything - Mark Bittman.

A review from Kitchn

How to Cook Everything - the basics - Mark Bittman. A review from ShelfAwareness.

A lot of people don't know how to cook, and have never cooked anything. Mark Bittman's books are often recommended to this group of people. And the books are excellent sources of information, and so they're useful to lots of people. They're very clear and easy to use.

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan.

A VERY SHORT, almost bullet point, review from FiveBooks And a longer review from LitHub

She wrote two books in the 1970s, and these were combined and updated in the 1990s for this book. These books are widely credited as introducing people outside Italy to "authentic" Italian cooking. LitHub review has already said everything that I'd want to say about this, but better than I could.

On Food and Cooking: The science and lore of the kitchen - Harold McGee.

A Kitchn review

This is a heavy duty book about the science of food. It's often described as the best single reference book for the science of food and cooking.

Food Lab: Better home cooking through science - J. Kenji López-Alt.

A review from Chemistry World

Surely everyone knows J. Kenji. He's really approachable. He give you science, but it's actionable and achievable.

In Bibi's Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the Eight African Countries that Touch the Indian Ocean - Hawa Hassan, Julia Turshen.

A mini-review from Kitchn. So, I'm cheating here because I haven't seen this recommended by anyone but I wanted more books that are not Euro-US focussed. This book focuses on food from Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, and Comoros

Each chapter starts with a short geo-political intro. You'll be familiar if you've ever read the CIA World Factbook. It then has a short interview with a grandmother, and then it gives some recipes.

Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making - Wordery link - James Peterson.

A review from MostlyFood

"Don’t be put off by the size of this book. It’s true that it’s as big as a small piece of furniture but it’s as big as that for a good reason. There isn’t any padding in Sauces. It’s cover-to-cover solid information that will be welcomed by anyone wanting to perfect sauce-making. Nothing seems to be omitted or overlooked. Every imaginable sauce is described, including Asian Sauces which have been added since the publication of the first edition."

Lots of people like that "no padding" feature.

How to Eat: The pleasures and principles of good food - Nigella Lawson.

A review by Food 52

"Thinking back on the lifespan of this formative book, I can’t help but feel that it’s to the recipes in it, and of course to Lawson herself, that I owe much of my confidence in the kitchen today."

Lots of people just want to cook tasty food and they're not bothered by The Science. Lawson's books are excellent if you want great home cooking.

The Professional Chef - The Culinary Institute of America

There are lots of versions of this book. The current version will be expensive. The older version are usually very similar and will be much cheaper.

Home cooks often get into weird habits and that's fine - it's your kitchen, do what works for you. But if you want to get better in the kitchen by improving your techniques and skills this is the book for you.

Hey,wanderers of tildes it's time to share your travel stories.Are you on the move right now?
What was your last trip like?
Favourite food or hole in the walls you have come across around the world.
Share anything and everything.
Also any tip involving travels and scams you have encountered share it.
This is a tips thread that was on r/solotravel i found really helpful feel free to add more.
SHARE AWAY..

Reddit refugee here, I've been posting my book reviews on /r/Fantasy for years and figured some of you all would be interested in a best of list. My full list of all book reviews can be found here, but most of the links are broken right now because the Fantasy subreddit is still private. Still, perhaps the titles, authors and keywords are helpful.

What I enjoy

A brief list of things I care about in books, to help you jugde whether your taste overlaps:

• a good balance of romance and plot, where there is prominent romance but never feels like the story is just about that
• quality prose and dialogue
• believable relationship development, including romantic tension and explicit payoff for it
• high stakes drama, be it interpersonal, warfare, duels, court politics or heists
• LBGTQ+ main characters and queer romance

Note that these aren't the only qualities of the books listed below, just generally what I look for. I'll also gladly take recommendations for fantasy books that fit these criteria if you have any!

Books

Kushiel's Legacy by Jacqueline Carey

A divinely blessed masochistic courtesan and spy uncovers conspiracies against the crown of fantasy France. This series is probably my absolute favorite for how it combines intrigue, romance, kink and action, all with excellent prose and characterization. It has deliciously horny worldbuilding and ends up telling an epic fantasy story with an incredibly unique protagonist.

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco

A recent addition to my absolute favorites. The author described the book as "vampire couple finds himbo in the trash and takes him in". If you're not sold on that, imagine a vibe like Netflix Castlevania and The Witcher - vampire hunter who's highly competent but looked down upon, vampire science, undead threat, dark gothic kind of setting, sprinkled with some "who's the real monster actually?" philosophy.

A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson

A Dowry of Blood is about healing from abusive relationships through murder. It's also walks an excellent line between being sexy and horrible. It tells the story of Dracula's "brides", and the beautifully messed up relationship the four of them have.

Note: this one can't be described as having a "romantic subplot", since that implies some sort of happy ending. You know, because of the murder. (that's not a spoiler, it's revealed on page one)

A Charm of Magpies by KJ Charles

A disgraced nobleman returns to England years after escaping his father and finds himself and his family estate haunted. He hires a magician - who happens to bear his family a grudge. The Magpie series is fast paced, highly entertaining, well written, and plays with some delicious power dynamics between its initially hostile and soon reluctantly mutually attracted main characters.

Folk of the Air by Holly Black

The only YA series on this list, Folk of the Air holds a special place in my heart for its delicious fairy court politicking and for not pulling its punches. The titular Cruel Prince is a wonderfully hateable love interest, and even though I feel a few years too old to properly enjoy this series, the stabby and vicious dynamics between the two leads is just wonderful.

Nightrunner by Lynn Flewelling

A young man gets innocently imprisoned and receives unexpected help from his cellmate: a spy, rogue, thief and nobleman. The latter offers him a way out and an apprenticeship, which leads to well... spying and thievery, but also sinister necromantic plots against the throne. The highlight of this series is the ongoing relationship development between its leads. Book 1-2 are fantastic, book 4-5 are really weird, but the whole series remains a favorite despite some strange choices.

Rook & Rose by M.a. Carrick

A skilled con artist, a masked vigilante that challenges aristocrats to duels, and a dashing crime lord turned nobleman. The Rook & Rose series shines in its rich worldbuilding and prose, but especially in its handling of its main characters' multiple secrets, cons and identities. And especially shines when those schemes start crumbling down and some of the secrets become unveiled.

If the third book in the trilogy sticks the landing later this year, this series will firmly establish itself among my all time favorites.

The Stariel Quartet by AJ Lancaster

Years after leaving her family, a young woman returns home for her father's funeral and soon needs to deal with a magical estate that has a mind of its own, and discover that there may be more magic in the world around her than she's realized. The Stariel series is cozy and home-y in many ways, but doesn't shy away from tension either, and I find myself still in love with the main characters even long after finishing the series. I also really enjoyed the spinoff, A Rake of His Own recently!

Harrow Faire by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

Most of the books on here are fantasy with romance, while this one sits more firmly in the capital R Romance genre. But it is dark romance ("villain gets the girl"), and features an absolutely unhinged love interest, a lot of murder, and an evil circus. The series isn't without flaws (some of the side characters get a bit too much page for
how flat they are, and the pacing is a tiny bit uneven in parts), but I blasted through all five (short) books in a week because I had so much fun with it.

The Last Binding by Freya Marske

This series takes place in an early 20th century England where a secret magical society exists in parallel to the world 'as we know it'. There's even a bit of magical British bureaucracy that reminded me of aspects of the Harry Potter books, though the series have little in common otherwise.
Every book in this trilogy follows the same overarching plot, but features a different pairing of main characters and romantic leads. It's queer, fun and fast-paced, though sometimes a bit on the fluffy and romancey side for my taste.

That's just a brief selection of favorites, I highly recommend heading over to the reddit post (I should back that up at some point with Reddit's future being a bit shaky rn) to find more titles.

Thank you for reading! There's lots more to say on each of theses books of course, but I didn't want this to get way too long.
Let me know if you found this interesting, if you have similar books you'd recommend to me, or just share if you also enjoyed any of these books. This is my first post on Tildes and I'm happy to meet new fellow readers :)

I don't intend this to be a sales pitch or anything, I just wanted to share my impression of the Bambu Labs P1P 3D printer in case anyone on here was curious and maybe considering buying one themselves.

I have owned a few Prusa FDM printers over the years but recently tried the Bambu Labs P1P after seeing tons of rave reviews, especially in terms of how fast it prints. Anyone that has done any 3d prints knows that print time is among the least enjoyable aspects of the hobby: lots of waiting.

Right out the gate, the P1P is a solid device with impressive construction given its relatively low price tag (I got it for $600 USD). And this thing easily rivals high performance machines in it's same "category", like the Prusa mk 3 and 4. And those are typically more expensive; the P1P comes 99.5% assembled at that price but a Prusa machine fully assembled is around 60% more expensive.

Most of the "assembly" is just removing packaging, like zip ties, that kept the unit safe and secure during transit. Then you connect the power cable, screen, spool holder, and filament tube. And that's it. The whole thing took maybe 10 minutes.

Getting the WiFi to connect is impossible for me at the moment, but I don't mind copying sliced gcode to the included microsd for printing. Sure, sending the gcode over WiFi would be super cool, but my Prusa doesn't do that so it's not like I've lost something. I'm hoping to eventually figure it out but that's not a deal breaker for me. I'm guessing I just need to temporarily move the printer next to the WiFi router but I haven't made time for it because I'm enjoying just printing off the card.

With the included 0.4mm nozzle (a standard size), it prints typically 2 to 3 times faster. Something that takes 23 hours might take 11. Something that takes 3 hours might take 1. For larger and more complex prints, you can get stuff done so much faster. For smaller and simpler prints, you no longer need to plan batches either first thing in the morning or overnight, you can just start them whenever. Whatever you printed before, you can print 2 to 3 times as many in one go in the same amount of time.

I don't have the AMS system but hope to get that at some point. If it has the same high quality build and performance as the P1P then I'm certain it will bring me simple multi-filament printing. And although I'm not nearly rich enough to afford more than 1 AMS, you can technically connect up to to 4 at once. Each unit holds up to 4 filament spools, so 4x4 means you could theoretically use 16 different filaments in a single print. The colors you could have! But each unit is like $350. Ouch.

I only have 2 real gripes with it so far. First, it purges way too much filament at the start of a print. I get why it does that, it absolutely ensures that your filament is always properly primed to assist in printing that critical first layer correctly, but it feels very wasteful to have a seemingly-excessive amount of filament thrown away with each print.

Second gripe is that the default spool holder is awful to access. You are likely to put the back of the machine facing a wall and that's where the spool holder will end up facing: the wall. You need to ensure the printer is a little more than two spool's width away from the wall - at the very least - so you can slide your spools on and off. Thankfully the bed doesn't move back and forth like with traditional fdm printers, thanks to the corexy technology, so you can more easily plan out where to put it and how much space it will need.

I haven't messed around with them yet but I just got additional hotends for it that I will be testing soon. The pack I got contains 0.2mm for prints that require very fine detail, 0.6mm for prints where detail is slightly less important than speed, and 0.8mm for when you want to go fast and don't care how much detail you get. Because they use a proprietary construction of hotend, you must use theirs, but the upside is that it's fairly fast and simple to switch them out. Most hotends, you just replace the tip, the actual nozzle. But because filament can gunk up the threads, you need to run it hot to unscrew the nozzle, which is very dangerous. With the P1P, you just pull off the magnetic faceplate, undo a few screws, swap the hotend, put the screws back, and pop the faceplate back on. In just a few minutes, you're done. And no need to turn on the hotend either; just unload your filament prior, let it cool down, and swap away. A much safer and more pleasant experience.

Overall, I'm in love with 3d printing all over again. It's the same feeling I got all those years ago when I did my very first 3d print. And sure, the Prusa is still great when you want high quality detailed prints. Going slow and steady wins that particular race still. But I get quality that is 90+% comparable to what the prusa gives me in exchange for literally 2x to 3x print speeds. That's an easy trade for me. And the slicer software estimates that some of my larger and less detailed prints could print in right 2/3 the time using the 0.6mm nozzle instead of the default 0.4mm. That translates to roughly 7 hours on my Prusa (0.4), 3.5 hours in my P1P (0.4), and 2 hours on my P1P (0.6). Given how much easier it is to swap out nozzles on the P1P, I can see myself actually doing that not frequently for certain prints that, like in my example, see substantial benefit.

I'm very excited to see how this machine holds up in the long run!

Hey everyone. I just beat FFXVI and wanted to share my thoughts in case anyone was thinking of getting the game, or if anyone wants to have a good discussion about the game. I tried to make it as spoiler-free as possible, but please do be advised that this could end up accidentally spoiling certain story elements.

Please note, these are just my opinions. I haven't really played any other FF games, so I'm only comparing this one on it's own merits. Please, if you disagree with something, don't lash out at me. I'm just a dude posting this for good fun and have 0 accolades on why I'm qualified to review anything lol

Also, if you're reading this and have a gaming recommendation for me, I am 100% open to it. I've been looking for some new games to play, so if you think of one I might enjoy while reading this, please let me know.

Pros:

• Graphics: This game looks amazing. There were times where I would just walk through locations and really appreciate how everything looked. I don’t do this often in video games, so it’s nice to see a world that felt genuinely awesome to appreciate and admire. You can tell a lot of work went into building these towns/locations, aside from some of the later areas.


• Combat: The combat in this game is great, addicting fun. I know this is a point of contention for fans of previous FF games and how this is a definite departure from the turn-based style, but some of the best moments I had were chaining combos and getting staggers quick. Towards the end of the game, I was able to bring down some of the mini-bosses extremely quickly and it never got old to pull off. I see people saying things like “You just press square the entire time and win” which I don’t agree with at all. If that’s how one chooses to play the game, then you’re actively not engaging with the combat mechanics and that’s on you. The combat can be complex with different abilities interacting with each other to obtain massive damage, that's what I like in a game.

• Story: The story of this game is phenomenal and I was engaged most of the way through. I’ll have some of my thoughts on story-beats below because there were times where this game dragged on, but the overall concept of a nation at war with each other and essentially starting your own faction from the ground-up is a lot of fun. About 50% of the way through, you’ll unlock a mechanic that allows you to see how all the factions have been interacting with each other, what wars were started and why those wars were happening throughout the entirety of timeline of the game. I spent a solid hour reading everything in these menus because I was intrigued by the complexity of everything and how it all tied into other events, and how sometimes your main characters crew were beyond detached from what was going on in the main world to achieve an ultimate goal. It’s really awesome to see what other antagonist are doing despite your current story beat being involved with something else at that moment, and I wish more games would incorporate this because it really works to make it feel like the game doesn’t revolve around you but that you are apart of an overall story.

Cons:


• Eikon battles: For those not in the know, you’ll occasionally transform into a giant beast (Eikon) named Ifrit and take on other giant beasts (Eikons) throughout the story. At first, these were really fun to play and were truly spectacular to watch but as the story goes on, the fights get less and less engaging. In these parts of the game, you really can just press square and win. Aside from dodging, there is practically no complexity or strategy to these fights. There really isn’t strategy with the main combat either but at least with the main combat, you can pull off insane combos. As Ifrit though? Forget about it. The best combo you can do is ‘Square, Square, Square, Square, Triangle’. You do get 2 abilities as the story goes on, but they’re really nothing special. I actually started to play these section how I play Diablo; outheal the damage. I just used the one combo and healed 2-3 times per fight, while closing the distance as much as possible. I guess this is a valid strategy but I can’t imagine this is how the devs wanted these parts to play out.


• Quicktime events: I think QTE’s should stay in the 360/PS3 generation. I haven’t seen a current Gen game utilize QTE’s, let alone utilize them as many times as FFXVI did and it’s these dated mechanics that are definitely contributing to others saying the game feels outdated. There are multiple times where you’ll go up to a door click ‘X’ and it will be like ‘Now hold R2’. This happens a lot in the game. It happens so often that I’m not convinced at all that it has anything to do with enhancing the gameplay and was made simply to show off the Dualsense controls because, whilst I don’t like the QTE, the Dualsense will give this haptic feedback during these parts. I can’t really explain it, but it does occasionally work well enough to be immersive. The other QTE events are during Eikon battles, and they’re literally just ‘Press X’ and ‘Press R2’ in an extremely generous amount of time. There’s also another QTE even where you just mash square endlessly until you win, which reminds me of mini games in Mario Party 1… on the Nintendo 64 nearly 30 years ago. It’s just an outdated design IMO and I would have rather just watched cutscenes than occasionally press a button. I will say though, there was one QTE which I laughed at. There’s a scene where the MC is coming to grips with an important story-beat and the QTE literally says “Press L3 & R3 to accept the truth”. This gave me giant “Press F for respects” vibes, and I don’t know whether they meant for this to be hilarious but it was. This is the only QTE event I thought was good.


• 70% fun, 30% drag: I found the first 70% of this game to be an insanely good experience. Truly next-gen and one of the best action games I have played. The story was engaging, the combat was really fun and the character/world building peaks about here. Afterwards though, not so much. It goes from being a story about conflict between nations but once that resolves, it’s a story about killing God. From here, I really couldn’t care less about the happenings. The people you’re built to dislike from the beginning have resolved story arcs, they introduce new antagonists that aren’t super interesting and it’s just an overall slog the last 30%. Also, that’s a specific percentage, but when I found myself wanting the story to wrap up, it was right at the 70% mark. From what I’ve read/watched about the FF series, it seems like a few of the games have this inevitable drop-off and can get pretty convoluted, but what I can say is… that first 70% was some of the best gaming I’ve had in a while. The last 30%, not so much.
 The ending of the game was great though and I hope that we get a continuance of this story later on.

Random Thoughts:


• Side-quests: I’ve seen people saying the side-quests are generic MMO like side-quests and I flat out disagree. First off, I think the only reason anyone is making the MMO comparison is because the same team that made FFXIV (an MMO) created this game, so it’s low hanging fruit and easy to criticize without putting in any effort. The side quests are not any different from any other RPG game I’ve played. Most side quests in most RPGS boil down to “Talk to this person, go kill this thing, come back and get a reward”. I have played very few RPG’s that didn’t have these as a majority of their side quests. Even something as recently as Diablo 4 has primarily only these types of side quests. I don’t understand why people give FFXVI so much flack, but I just don’t agree. The side quests are more about world-building and getting to know what your average person existing in this world deals with. You’ll learn backstory about your companions you wouldn’t know otherwise, get various upgrades/mementos and really get to know the world you are playing the game in. I’m not saying that some of these side quests aren’t just “Go talk to this person, then talk to this person and win”, because there are some that are really that simple, and if that’s not your thing then that’s okay, but I seriously don’t understand why people are giving this game flack for doing the same things that every RPG has done before. Just seems unfair IMO.


• RPG Mechanics: This game should have either added more RPG mechanics, or leaned into the action style and got rid of them entirely. There is no point in leveling up in this game. You don’t get rewarded for leveling up. It happens automatically and you don’t get to distribute any skill-points or anything like that. You literally don’t get anything but new weapon unlocks and an increasing number. I have never played a more shallow RPG. You get Ability Points which can increase your Eikon powers, but somewhere down the line, you just start stockpiling these because you have nowhere to spend them. Sure, you can unlock more abilities and increase those powers, but why would you do that? This game has obvious skills that are significantly stronger than other skills, so why would you use those other skills? I’m sure if I experimented around, I can find some great ways the skills I never used can interact with each other, but why would I when the ones I use now are already doing massive damage? IMO, they should have just leaned into the action gameplay and did away with the RPG mechanics. I know this is FF and FF is an RPG series, but the RPG mechanics are insultingly bad in this game and I can see why FF take offense to it. I do, and I’ve never extensively played any of the others. They could have at least added damage modifiers, resistances, etc that you can spend Ability Points on. By the end of the game, I had 8000 unspent Ability Points because there was just nowhere to spend them once you've got your play style.

Overall, I'd give the first 70% a 9/10 and the last 30% a 7.5/10.

Every time I would be in the market for something particular, say, a keyboard, or a camping tent, I would ask google, “What is the best air fryer, Reddit.”

I would get the link to the subject, however niche it was, and see discussions from assumedly real folks talking about the subject I was curious about. It was informative, and I could research deeper into brands or products I didn’t know about before.

Is there another site that even comes close to that? Or are we currently in a dark period until something like that comes along? I don’t typically use advertised websites to tell me “lists of the top ten handheld gaming consoles.”

Just wondering if there’s an alternative to my previous method of research.

The Verge, Washington Post, CNET, Engadget reviews

RIP to my Pixel Fold: Dead after four days

Haven't had time to go through all the reviews but as it's a major new device from Google I thought there might be some interest here.

Books, films, foods, gadgets, games, etc. A good review/analysis can enhance our understanding and appreciation of the works or products. Let's give them some shoutout.

Edit: add analysis (can't believe I forgot one of the big categories like this) ^facepalmed