Well_known_bear's recent activity

  1. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Well_known_bear
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    All JRPGs all the time lately. Finished up Dragon Quest XI S. If Final Fantasy aspires to be fine dining, then this is mum's home cooking. One hundred hours of mum's home cooking. The world itself...

    All JRPGs all the time lately.

    Finished up Dragon Quest XI S.

    • If Final Fantasy aspires to be fine dining, then this is mum's home cooking. One hundred hours of mum's home cooking. The world itself is not even particularly expansive, but the assets and areas are recycled smartly enough that it never felt like a slog and I ended up finishing everything other than the super bosses at the end. I must have played that blacksmithing minigame for at least 5 hours by itself...

    • The thing that really struck me as I played this game is that against all odds, Dragon Quest still retains all of the politically incorrect sensibilities of the Showa era in which the original games were released. There are still bunny girls, porn magazines and dirty old men. You can still gamble at slots and pay ladies to shove their breasts in your face. You can still give your female party members racy underwear and dress them up as schoolgirls, exotic dancers or cats. A little difficult to imagine Square Enix (which is, after all, now a global facing games giant) giving this kind of leeway to any other franchise - see in particular the counterexample below for its other flagship series.

    • I wish this game would let you use the double / triple / quadruple techs all the time, Chrono Trigger style. There are so many combos and the devs obviously put a ton of work into creating custom animations for all of them (some of which are super goofy), but most players are never going to see like 80% of them because you can only use these skills when all of the relevant characters go into their super Saiyan 'zone' state, and that's complete RNG.

    • Speaking of RNG, I want to give a special shout out to the worst RPG side quest in history which is featured in this game. Anyone who has played this game will likely know the one I mean:

    This quest features a little orphan girl who entrusts you with what scarce money she has so that you can help her buy a statue - a gift for the kind man who runs her orphanage. Unfortunately, the last statue available has been purchased by a man who has disappeared into the casino (which understandably doesn't admit minors), so she wants you to go in and buy the statue from him.

    However, once you get in there and find the man, it turns out that he's a degenerate who refuses to part with the statue unless you show him a jackpot in roulette, which is when the ball lands on the specific number and that number also lands in the jackpot space.

    There is some debate online about the exact odds of hitting the jackpot and whether you can improve them, but no one has come up with any method that demonstrably does so, and some unlucky players have reportedly spent dozens of hours grinding roulette without success. I personally spent about 2 hours save scumming it myself during which I tried every method I could find in Google - no dice.

    What's worse, there is no other way to complete this quest. You cannot have your thief steal the statue. You cannot seduce him for it. You cannot knife him in the face and take it. You can't even give the money back to the little girl. You are committed to praying to the RNG gods indefinitely or forever being the hero who misappropriated money from an orphan.

    I ended up downloading a mod which lets you win the jackpot in one spin and can heartily recommend this solution to any other PC players.

    Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

    What more is there to say about this game that hasn't already been said? Great visuals, great music, great gameplay and just enough game.

    • I was a little apprehensive that this game would melt my modest PC given it's UE5, but it runs fine at around 70-80fps once dropped to 1080p with DLSS. I grew up gaming on CRTs so have absolutely no issue with 'low' resolution, but I am feeling the limitations of 8GB VRAM more and more these days with these AAA releases as the pop-in and level of detail shifts are pretty noticeable.

    • The reporting around this game really made the parrying sound a lot more important than it is. If that isn't your bag, it is still completely playable as a regular JRPG where you ignore the parry button and just make best efforts to learn the enemy attack patterns and dodge. I played the whole game this way on the regular difficulty and am convinced that you could probably even just facetank the damage and not dodge at all if you're setting up your equipment and skills properly.

    • As undeniably JRPG influenced as most of the game is, I had to laugh when I saw the camp system and how the character socialisation worked. It's the most Dragon Age / Baldur's Gate 3 western game design imaginable.

    Final Fantasy XVI

    If you're playing this in Japanese, you'll quickly realise that something feels off:

    • All of the tutorial screenshots are from the English version.
    • A whole bunch of the in-game text is also in English, like the pop-ups during combat and the '[Boss name] slain' banners.
    • None of the lip synching matches the Japanese voices. It's clearly made for the English script.

    Between this and the Game of Thrones sex and violence presentation, it's difficult to avoid the impression that the devs were trying their damnedest to make something first and foremost for western audiences rather than Final Fantasy, and while I don't want to say that this game is bad as a result, it's kind of hard to recommend:

    • The level design isn't far off from FFXIII's trashmob corridors followed by a boss, and even where it seems to have some options for exploring, you aren't rewarded with anything more than expendable potions or crafting materials for stuff you can often just buy with money.

    • The combat feels like Nier Replicant (i.e. not the fun one). You're just repeating the same combo over and over, but it's even worse since your only weapon is the sword, there's no real choice of magic, equipment (+7% to the effectiveness of one move or +9% to a different move!) or items to speak of and your movement speed is so slow that I would often barely manage to stroll outside AOE attacks telegraphed an eon in advance. There is a teleport move, but it's not in every loadout and our protagonist only learnt how to teleport to enemies, so it's useless when you want to move away.

    • The subquests are largely fetch quests for randos reminiscent of Xenoblade 1. In some cases, there's at least an attempt at adding exposition to the depressing world inhabited by the characters, but none of them are actually fun to play.

    But wait, there's stuff I like too!

    • The game looks great. It's some odd internal engine instead of UE, but it looks every bit as good. It's also reasonably performant, although it absolutely chugs on the world map due to the weird decision to load wherever you're going during the world map transition animation.

    • The idea of certain people being Dominants who can transform into gigantic kaijyuu Eikons (funnily only referred to as shoukanjyuu or 'summon beasts' in the Japanese script despite this being the one game where they're not summons) and turn the tide of battles is really cool in an Attack on Titan kind of way, although the story doesn't always follow through on it. For example, right at the beginning of the game, you have a nation that just abandons their Dominant entirely when leaving the battlefield, which is kind of akin to just leaving your nuclear deterrent behind. A real head scratcher.

    • Middle aged bad ass Cid is great and an obvious homage to the game breaking 'Thunder God' Cidolfus from FFT. I appreciate them giving a Cid a relevant story role again.

    I may stick with this just out of morbid curiosity. It's a striking comparison with how confident FF7R is in sticking with its JRPG roots (switch to action combat not withstanding), weirdness and all.

    Dragon Quest I Remake

    The grand daddy of JRPGs which stole the fire from the Olympus of Wizardry and Ultima and gave it to Final Fantasy, Megami Tensei and all the others to follow.

    • Famously, this is the one which doesn't have a party - it's just you, the hero, against all of the monsters in the world. You might expect that this implies a pretty chill experience where you just grind fights, level up and roll through dungeons, but that's not where this remake is at. It takes every opportunity to send gank squads of 4-6 enemies your way, and often they'll hit like a truck, take two actions per turn and/or mercilessly spam the instant death spell Zaki (in a single party member game!?) The result is that you're constantly switching equipment to do crowd control and thinking about all of your options, because again, there's no designated healer or DPS or whatever - it's just you and your one action per turn. It's surprisingly engaging in a way that DQ XI isn't with its death squad of 8 party members, especially for the bosses that serve as a wall if you aren't hard countering their mechanics with your own strategy.

    • The original NES game is rough to play today, but this remake mostly solves the issues with a boatload of quality of life changes. No more buying keys, torches, etc. No more cryptic clues about what you need to do next. The only pain is from the usual garbage DQ inventory system, which is somehow even worse than DQ XI here since there's no 'equip' menu. Instead, you have an equip command which does nothing if your character's bag is full - it just asks if you want to empty the character inventory that you painstakingly picked out (you don't), even though all you want to do is replace one old piece of equipment item with one new piece of equipment. I ended up just using the workaround of opening the party inventory and manually replacing the relevant equipment in the character inventory, following which the game automatically asks if you want to equip the thing you just moved in. It's incredibly byzantine to have to do this each time and it baffles me how this wasn't raised by playtesters as the number one thing to remake.

    • In addition to the nice HD-2D graphics, the characters and story also get a bit of a modern overhaul. The original has very little story to speak of at all let alone characterisation, but characters in the remake move about, emote and actually have a bit of personality and relationship to the protagonist. I don't fault the original for not having this stuff, but it is something that people later came to expect as a given in JRPGs, so it's nice that it's in here.

    Dragon Quest II Remake

    Basically all of the above (it comes in the same package as a twofer), but significantly easier since you have an actual party in this game. I'm enjoying it and will likely also play DQ III Remake to round out the Roto trilogy.

    4 votes

  2. Comment on Question for those who played both the original and remake of Final Fantasy VII in ~games

    Well_known_bear
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    I think they're doing a good job with the remake series overall. There's stuff I don't like here and there but it's overwhelmingly outweighed by the positives. This varies a lot depending on the...

    1. I think they're doing a good job with the remake series overall. There's stuff I don't like here and there but it's overwhelmingly outweighed by the positives.

    2. This varies a lot depending on the character. Tifa and Barret are pretty much what I imagined. Red and Cid feel significantly different - Cid doesn't even swear anymore (in the Japanese script - maybe he still does in English?) I also liked the expanded roles for Yuffie and Cait Sith. Both were pretty forgettable in the original but really feel like part of the team in Rebirth.

      In the case of Cloud, my first impression was that they made him too unable to handle a human conversation (some of the stuff he says in Remake is just off the planet), but by Rebirth I think they find the right balance as he opens up a bit to his friends.

    3. It's a bit difficult to compare the vibes 1:1 since the pacing is different and events don't play out exactly the same way, but I think they hit the right notes for all of the big scenes people remember from the original. It's goofy where the original was goofy and dramatic where the original was dramatic. Some of the redone scenes like

      the date at the Gold Saucer and the scene where Aerith prays at the city of the ancients and you can hear what she's thinking
      I like much better than the original versions.

    4. I kind of hated the action combat system at first. It's not ATB, but it also doesn't really feel like a proper action game with i-frames and cancelling, especially if you're playing as one of the slower characters or waiting for a skill or spell to activate - it can feel like you're drinking from an estus flask at times! This is especially bad in Remake where half of the characters are ranged types with a very short and slow dodge.

      It does feel a fair bit better by Rebirth, though, with the new fast party members, the parry and the combination moves that incentivise you to switch around.

      I also think all the stuff they added around Sephiroth is rubbish (and having him constantly pop up is borderline comical), but you can't stop Nomura from being Nomura.

    6 votes

  3. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Well_known_bear
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    For people who just found the manga exhausting to read, I definitely think the anime is better in that respect and worth checking out. There's less effort required to follow it when you can...

    For people who just found the manga exhausting to read, I definitely think the anime is better in that respect and worth checking out. There's less effort required to follow it when you can visualise the action and hear the characters speak back and forth.

    It's interesting to compare it to the 1995 film which is based on the same material. I think having a whole season to cover the story will likely make it much more digestible.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Well_known_bear
    (edited )
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    Still watching cour 2 for LIAR GAME and Yomi no Tsugai. The former is growing on me. I expected it to be a story about how the naive protagonist becomes world-wise and crafty, but it's the...

    Still watching cour 2 for LIAR GAME and Yomi no Tsugai. The former is growing on me. I expected it to be a story about how the naive protagonist becomes world-wise and crafty, but it's the complete opposite - it's a story about how her good natured and trusting personality is an asset in a game about deception. Kind of an interesting take that I haven't seen before in this genre.

    On this season's shows:

    Mushoku Tensei S3
    All right so far, but it's mostly a side story that happens in parallel to S2.

    Despite how disappointed I was with S2 as a whole, there are parts of the story which I do find compelling (Orsted and Nanahoshi's plotline in particular) and I hope the main story focuses on those rather than the whole wife harem thing.

    Youjo Senki S2
    In many ways, essentially a grittier Strike Witches (not a high bar).

    Surprisingly decent animation. I remember S1 as being pretty inconsistent, so either this got a higher budget or these guys just got better at making anime in the last 9 years.

    S1 was generally a WWI setting, but we're now well into a weird mix of WWI and WWII with figures like Churchill and Stalin showing up. I don't love the fact that the protagonists are either Imperial Germany or the Nazis (take your pick), but I suppose they're not really portrayed as the good guys per se.

    Nijuuseiki Denki Mokuroku
    Very interesting visual style that renders everything other than the characters with an oil painting aesthetic. This works particularly well with the steampunk setting where there's constantly just steam and smoke swirling everywhere.

    Unfortunately, the actual story and characters don't grip me at all. If you compare it to Kyoto Animation's previous Netflix project Violet Evergarden, there's nothing like the incredible 'you're still burning' scene from the first episode which really sells the premise.

    There's also something about the way they deform the facial expressions on this show that I really dislike. I suppose it's meant to be a call back to older, more cartoon-like animation, but it just looks weird when juxtaposed with the more realistic character and setting design.

    THE GHOST IN THE SHELL
    Absolutely incredible adaptation of the manga.

    • The pacing is fast and it can be easy to lose the flow of the plot, but that's unavoidable due to how dense the manga itself is and I had the same issue when reading it, often having to re-read the same page again when my attention lapsed. They even manage to include some of the margin footnotes!

    • Visually, it looks amazing and completely faithful to the original 90s look. It feels like this is what animators from the 90s would have made if you had given them modern computers.

    • Sakamoto Maaya is as good as you'd expect as the new Major. What a range on this actor! I couldn't believe my ears when I saw she also did Aerith in FF7R. The new Batou is also great.

    • The music is everything you could ask for from a GITS soundtrack without getting Kanno Youko back. Everything from the jazzy action pieces to the dreamy ED is right on point.

    I can't remember the last time a series delivered so well on the promise of the trailers.

    6 votes

  5. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Well_known_bear
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    For what it's worth, the manga does explain why everything is low tech. Your mileage may vary as to whether it's a good explanation :P

    For what it's worth, the manga does explain why everything is low tech. Your mileage may vary as to whether it's a good explanation :P

    1 vote

  6. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Well_known_bear
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    Picked up Tenmaku no Jaadugar this season and loved it. Everything from the setting to the design work is a breath of fresh air in a time when the medium is dominated by shows leaning on well-worn...

    Picked up Tenmaku no Jaadugar this season and loved it. Everything from the setting to the design work is a breath of fresh air in a time when the medium is dominated by shows leaning on well-worn tropes.

    The supervising director is prolific Kyoto Animation alumni Yamada Naoko who also directed Heike Monogatari, which is probably the closest thing in visuals and feel to this show.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Well_known_bear
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    Watching Mahoutsukai no Yome during the seasonal gap. Nice and clean animation from WIT Studio. The 'I'm going to buy this teenage girl from an auction so I can marry her' premise is a rough one...

    Watching Mahoutsukai no Yome during the seasonal gap.

    Nice and clean animation from WIT Studio.

    The 'I'm going to buy this teenage girl from an auction so I can marry her' premise is a rough one to lead with, though.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on Physical disc production ending in January 2028 for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles in ~games

    Well_known_bear
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    Pretty bold move even given the current climate. If I'm a consumer, what's my incentive to buy into a system where Sony and Sony alone sets all prices and availability forever? The alternatives:...

    Pretty bold move even given the current climate.

    If I'm a consumer, what's my incentive to buy into a system where Sony and Sony alone sets all prices and availability forever?

    The alternatives:

    • Nintendo: Broad range of retailers competing and regularly selling at significantly below Nintendo's set price, even for new releases. GKCs continue to enable used game market.

    • PC: You can buy from Steam, Epic, GOG, etc who all compete on price with regular sales and bundles. Broad range of key resellers. Games stretching back into antiquity remain available because deeply passionate people have saved them and kept them compatible with modern PCs. Making backups is trivial. Indies release here by default and third party AAA makers can no longer afford not to release here, so you have access to everything other than first party games.

    8 votes

  9. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Well_known_bear
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    Finished up getting all the endings for Pocket Mirror. Really loved the visuals for this game - the whole cute lace and ribbons meets horror aesthetic is great. The only downsides: The story is...

    Finished up getting all the endings for Pocket Mirror. Really loved the visuals for this game - the whole cute lace and ribbons meets horror aesthetic is great. The only downsides:

    • The story is kind of obtuse and difficult to parse without seeing at least a few of the endings and unlocking some of the post-game content. I also didn't realise that this game was a sequel to Little Goody Two Shoes (which has an even more incredible early 90s VHS anime aesthetic) and makes a lot of references to the events in that story, so I probably should have played that first.

    • In order to get the alternative endings, you'll have to play through the same chapters quite a few times, but there's not enough variation in anything other than the endings to keep that interesting and the fast forward button isn't quite fast enough to not make it a chore, since it only fast forwards the text and not the animations. The devs did add a new game plus feature which has a chapter select / flag selection that makes this a lot easier - I can't imagine how tedious this would have been before that, especially with how opaque the conditions are to getting the different chapter outcomes.

    Dragon Quest XI S

    Playing this in honour of SE table flipping the development for DQ12.

    • This game is almost 10 years old at this point and is a PS4 game at its core, so it runs at a breezy 120fps even on my dinky GPU. Environments look a bit blocky by today's standards, but the characters and monsters all still look great and full of charm. It's striking how well stylised designs age.

    • The gameplay is very linear and mostly consists of going to where the conspicuous purple NPC directs you to go next while slaughtering everything in your path, but I'm not going to fault it for that since that's what people are signing up for with Dragon Quest. The towns, dungeons and field are notionally 'open zone', but there's very little to do in them other than run around and loot things (which can be quite fun in towns with a lot of nooks and crannies to poke around in but is a chore in big empty fields). Quests are sparse and simple to resolve. Mobs in the field can be effortlessly beaten in seconds with the auto battle AI settings. In general, there's very little friction to just constantly moving forward.

    • The only pain point is the terrible inventory system. For what I assume are historical reasons, every character has their own inventory rather than the shared inventory present in every other JRPG. This means that if you use a herb to heal in battle out of someone's inventory, you have to go into the menu afterwards and manually restock that character's inventory from your storage bag. If your thief steals some crafting materials, that stuff remains in his inventory to clutter it up until you manually move it out. It's incredibly tedious to engage with and baffling why they kept this in when streamlining so many other things (e.g. putting in a Persona-like one button 'just heal my dudes' feature instead of forcing you to manually go to the spells menu). I ended up just packing everyone's inventory with junk so that all new items would go into the storage bag by default.

    2 votes

  10. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Well_known_bear
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    Forgot to mention in last week's post that I also watched the Rilakkuma show all season. The reason I forgot was that this show is literally only 60 seconds long each week, but to its credit, it's...

    Forgot to mention in last week's post that I also watched the Rilakkuma show all season. The reason I forgot was that this show is literally only 60 seconds long each week, but to its credit, it's well animated and quite relaxing.

    Mappa's new show Jimoto Saikou looks very weird but kind of interesting and I may also give that a look next season.

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Steam Machine prices revealed, starting at US$1049.00 in ~games

    Well_known_bear
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    I was amused to see that at least one retailer is already offering its own homebrew Steam Machine at the same price. Price / performance aside, the little cube form factor is quite nice and I hope...

    I was amused to see that at least one retailer is already offering its own homebrew Steam Machine at the same price.

    Price / performance aside, the little cube form factor is quite nice and I hope Valve takes another crack at this format when component prices eventually settle.

    1 vote

  12. Comment on Steam Machine prices revealed, starting at US$1049.00 in ~games

    Well_known_bear
    Link Parent
    I have the same issue with my PC being in a different room to my living room. I considered a bunch of solutions (including a separate PC like the Steam Machine) but ultimately ended up just...

    I have the same issue with my PC being in a different room to my living room. I considered a bunch of solutions (including a separate PC like the Steam Machine) but ultimately ended up just getting a 15m optic fibre HDMI cable and running it from my PC to my TV.

    The upsides:

    • Pretty cheap. A decent HDMI 2.1 cable was only about the equivalent of USD 70.

    • No setup required. You can just run games exactly the same way you do on your current PC. My wireless controller works through the wall when in my living room, as do wireless / Bluetooth mouse / keyboard.

    • You can go back to playing games on your desktop whenever you feel like it. No need to fiddle around with separate installations.

    • Only one device to maintain and upgrade.

    The downsides:

    • Having to roll up and roll out the HDMI cable each time you game in the living room. If you can install this through walls / around molding in your home, this isn't even an issue. Otherwise, it's pretty fast if you just use the 'over and under' coiling technique.

    • TV occasionally forgets the right audio source. This is pretty rare though.

    I've also tried streaming to my TV via Apollo (a variant of Sunshine) / Moonlight. It's fine for non-action intensive games, but I found the occasional hitches (even over Wifi 7) and compromise in image quality to be a bit of a bummer and nowadays mostly go for the HDMI.

    4 votes

  13. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Well_known_bear
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    This season's shows LIAR GAME Here are the things I don't like about this show: The animation is pretty janky. The main protagonist is incorrigibly naive will have your palms glued to your face...

    This season's shows

    LIAR GAME
    Here are the things I don't like about this show:

    • The animation is pretty janky.
    • The main protagonist is incorrigibly naive will have your palms glued to your face throughout.
    • A couple of the tricks used by the protagonists and the antagonists could easily have been foiled by just demanding that the other party show their vote before they post it, and it kind of strains belief that these supposedly sharp players don't ask for that.

    Other than that, it's pretty low key enjoyable. The games are simple enough to grasp quickly but have enough depth to allow for strategy and dealing, and it's presented in a way where it's easy to follow along (i.e. with diagrams).

    Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu S4
    Other than the first couple of episodes which briefly suggested a return to the S1 formula of fumbling around in a world full of danger, dying and repeating, this is probably the worst season of the show so far. The plot is constantly lurching from point to completely unrelated point like S2, except without the interesting lore, character development or building up of audience investment in what the characters are trying to achieve.

    Yomi no Tsugai

    Rather slow paced with a ton of characters, but easy and pleasant to watch. The practicality of the protagonist and his willingness to just employ violence whenever expedient is refreshing.

    Next season's shows

    Mushoku Tensei S3
    I'm on the fence about whether to watch this. I loved S1 and the 'sometimes events have bad outcomes and you just have to do your best to live with them' tone to the writing. S2 felt like a complete about face from that and ended up as the worst kind of school harem wish fulfilment dreck which squandered the character development built up in S1. Might give it a few episodes and drop it if it's truly awful.

    Youjo Senki S2
    Not sure why it took 9 years for season 2 to come out, but I remember it being a fun (if somewhat mindless) watch and will probably also watch this. Kind of surprised that NUT are still around to produce this as I've barely seen anything else from them in the intervening years.

    Nijuuseiki Denki Mokuroku
    Not entirely in my wheelhouse but willing to give this a shot since it's Kyoto Animation. I ended up finishing Hibike! Euphonium recently and enjoyed the movies / S3 a great deal.

    THE GHOST IN THE SHELL
    Looks better each time a new trailer comes out. Very enthused for this one.

    No adaptations of any manga I'm following next season other than Thunder 3, which is completely ridiculous but good fun. I seem to remember there being a kerfuffle about whether this was actually Gantz's Oku Hiroya writing under a different pen name because it's just so similar to his style (read: incredibly pulpy sci-fi action).

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Access to Fable and Mythos 5 cut off after US government order in ~tech

    Well_known_bear
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    Here are a couple of simple questions (with perhaps no simple answers). Normally, regulation takes the form of a legislated framework where (ideally) all players understand in advance what is...

    Here are a couple of simple questions (with perhaps no simple answers).

    Normally, regulation takes the form of a legislated framework where (ideally) all players understand in advance what is likely to be fair game. It's pretty unusual in any industry for the government to just point to a new product and say 'we reckon this is too powerful, no go'.

    If the US government could potentially do this to any model going forward (and is presumably more likely to do so the more capable the model is):

    1. What impact will this have on the valuations of US AI companies, many of which are being priced on the basis of widespread adoption and constant improvement?

    2. What impact will this have on the current demand for semiconductors from the AI sector (and resulting shortage everywhere else)?

    18 votes

  15. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Well_known_bear
    Link Parent
    Kind of wish the toy-like non-'real robot' approach to mecha anime that they had in Majestic Prince would make a comeback. The writing might not have been the best, but the fight scenes with the...

    Kind of wish the toy-like non-'real robot' approach to mecha anime that they had in Majestic Prince would make a comeback. The writing might not have been the best, but the fight scenes with the mechs zipping around all over the place were really cool.

    Sadly, mecha anime itself seems pretty dormant these days outside of Gundam.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Well_known_bear
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    Been a slow season for me anime-wise, so I've mostly been reading VNs and manga. Pen to Wappa to Jijitsukon Mystery / romcom about a police detective and an unusually observant mute girl who...

    Been a slow season for me anime-wise, so I've mostly been reading VNs and manga.

    Pen to Wappa to Jijitsukon

    Mystery / romcom about a police detective and an unusually observant mute girl who unilaterally decides they should get married. The mysteries are a bit all over the place in terms of quality, but the art is cute and there's an interesting overarching story that ties into the backgrounds of the two protagonists.

    Recently confirmed for an anime adaptation.

    Toshi Densetsu-senpai

    Comedy / horror about a university student who loves horror and her senior who attracts ghosts, monsters and urban legends of all kinds.

    Not as good as Utsuranain desu which has a very similar premise but also a cute romcom element, but still pretty funny in a dry way.

    1 vote

  17. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Well_known_bear
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    Interesting, I didn't realise that all of the cases in Staffer Case had alternative routes. I only got the 'bad ending' in case 4 and assumed it was something you had to see before seeing the good...

    Interesting, I didn't realise that all of the cases in Staffer Case had alternative routes. I only got the 'bad ending' in case 4 and assumed it was something you had to see before seeing the good ending.

    It sounds like the sequel will implement actual branching paths based on how you resolve each case.

    I also enjoyed Staffer Reborn, although it's much shorter. It has story elements which directly follow on from Case so is probably best played after completing that one.

    1 vote

  18. Comment on Nintendo Direct announced for June 9th in ~games

    Well_known_bear
    (edited )
    Link
    Xenoblade Genesis Mildly excited for this, although it does look a bit drab and generic fantasy compared to the earlier games. Other than the obligatory 'running through a big field of grass under...

    Xenoblade Genesis

    Mildly excited for this, although it does look a bit drab and generic fantasy compared to the earlier games. Other than the obligatory 'running through a big field of grass under a blue sky' scene, you could have told me this was a Tales or Trails game and I would have believed it. No giant robots, glowing swords or nopons to be seen anywhere.

    I really liked Saitou Masatsugu's art for 2-3. Yoneyama Mai is also a good choice, but again none of the designs are really screaming Xenoblade to me.

    The 4k 60fps switch 2 versions for 1-3 with new blades / 7th characters and quests sound nice, but if Nintendo is going to upcharge for this, the least they could do is also throw in the DLC.

    Ocarina of Time remake

    It looks fine. I get the feeling a lot of people were expecting something closer to the Wind Waker or Breath of the Wild cartoony art style, but the original game always had a more grounded look (within the confines of what the N64 could actually output) and this doesn't strike me as wildly deviating from that.

    I'm not up in arms about the length as this is clearly a teaser and this game will certainly have its own direct. I'm very interested to see if they overhaul the gameplay. If it's just the same game with better graphics and a single new dungeon, then I can't really justify buying this again. On the off chance that it's an entirely new game which just reuses the story beats, though, I'm definitely on board.

    Pokopia DLC

    The dive move is nice, but I don't think it'll be a massive change to the base campaign unless they also add a bunch of underwater areas to explore and loot. Might be cool for people who want to build underwater aquariums and whatnot, though.

    The underwater town from the season pass felt a bit weird. Maybe the premise is that there used to be a town above water that became submerged? It'd still probably feel a bit weird to restore it only for it to still be entirely underwater, though.

    Atelier Karia

    I'm not a big Atelier person. I just found it interesting that KT is reversing course after the heavily male-targeted character designs of Ryza/Yumia and going back to the more slender waif-like character designs of the earlier games.

    Final Fantasy Resonance

    A bit torn on this one. On one hand, I like classic turn based JRPGs. On the other, this is SE recycling a gacha game, complete with cross-overs blended into an IP slurry, which is very off putting to me. I'd probably be better off playing Octopath Traveler 2 over this.

    Touhou 6 remaster

    I'm glad they kept the ZUN art for this. It would lose a lot of character if they replaced it.

    Not sure a remaster was really needed other than for compatibility reasons, as it otherwise looks pretty similar to the original.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on Can't post URLs with CJK chars in them? in ~tildes

  20. Comment on Persona 6 | Teaser trailer in ~games

    Well_known_bear
    Link Parent
    Looks like it will be out on Xbox, PS5 and PC. I may end up holding off for the inevitable 'complete edition', by which point there may well be a Switch 2 port too.

    Looks like it will be out on Xbox, PS5 and PC.

    I may end up holding off for the inevitable 'complete edition', by which point there may well be a Switch 2 port too.

    6 votes