People shit on the franchise because they did kind of rush production, but honestly they hold up if it’s what you’re into. It’s just kind of sad they can’t all be AC2 quality, that was probably the best of the lot in terms of storytelling, intriguing exploration, etc. I still remember climbing into that girl’s place in the opening as Ezio.

Oddly, 4 does have a few cities in addition to the nautical stuff. They aren’t big name cities, but Havana, Kingston and Nassau of that period. Kind of interesting, especially right when Pirates of the Caribbean was popular.

I hadn’t even thought about it until you brought it up. Kind of disappointed in people jumping on this like flies on shit but like… it’s 2025, so bigger things to be upset about.

In any case, apples and oranges. And PSA, if you need a Switch 2, grab em on the rebound. There’ll be used ones, likely hackable in 6 months and none of that goes to Nintendo. Don’t forget what their legal department has done in the past few years.

Piracy and emulation is inevitable, although we’ll see if it’s months or years. I’m boycotting Nintendo over their legal practices, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to play their games. It’ll be extra juicy to be able to emulate it eventually, although buying used is technically an option too.

I’ve been using Launchbox, especially since I play emulator games. They’ve improved the efficiency of large libraries and added support for RetroAchievements, although I manually toggle completion status since I don’t always use it to launch my games so the time tracker isn’t accurate.

More importantly it let’s me hit randomize, so if I’m feeling adventurous it’ll pull a game from my backlog I might have got from anywhere.

Same, but given the time sink I’d like an abridged experience. I heard they doing that with DQX so why not FFXI?

Couple other things to add to this beautiful list others have: meta gaming and chat.

They barely added achievements and only for a couple games, while steam has that, guides, community art, and even a newish notes feature in case you’re playing an OG game that makes you track stuff. Guides have kind of been better than more traditional sources.

Chat is… better on steam, although discord kind of supplanted it. Game based emoji, stickers, etc. It’s actually very good, though, with support for couch coop stream gaming, etc, with voice comms.

One could also point to the generous family sharing function, but I’m not sure what Epic does in that regard. DRM is DRM though. Do keep in mind, though, the philosophy behind Steam is to make DRM palatable by adding features. Epic philosophy (on paper) is to give devs a higher cut, although I’ve heard devs feel more supported by steam-- especially since they aren’t afraid to throw obscure indie games into a users discovery queue.

A steam deck lite would probably dominate, lol

At this point I want Switch 2 to flop so hard they go the way of the Sega and start licensing their IPs on other platforms, giving up on consoles. A shame, too, since their tech is little kid hand friendly and the PC market doesn’t seem keen on tiny screen handhelds.

Reminds me that Nintendo had help lines you could call for stuff like Zelda secrets, and they may have intentionally added things like secret caves to incentivize that lucrative service.

You want the absolute “guide damn it” example? Try playing the OG Dragon Quest games. They’re nonlinear by nature and there’s a spot in 2 (or was it 3) where you need to literally check an unmarked floor for an item. No indicator, save maybe a vague NPC dialogue in another part of the planet that didn’t get adequately translated in English so you’re truly aimless.

Ugh. I hate this timeline.

My 8bitdo story, back when they’re we’re just starting to put joysticks on their SNES style controllers, I used mine to the point that the joysticks were falling apart. I sent them a support email, and even though it wasn’t covered by any warranty or anything, a very nice Chinese person working there sent me a spare set of joysticks in the mail, plus words of encouragement (in somewhat broken English) since I wasn’t shy about fixing the thing myself.

Can’t imagine that today, but it was a nice gesture and I’m glad they’re still making stuff today.

Concord

Haha, just kidding.

Honestly, all the good news these days are from people giving him and Trump shit.

Traditionally, yes, but I do want to note that modern takes use it to also argue for cooperation, since working with with others is good for survival and passing on genes. They also are the first to tell people how bunk the alpha male crap is, and the fact a lone wolf is a dead wolf.

Good question, I’m not sure if they cover video game industry but they probably should.

On the one hand, the strikes last time have my wife a difficult situation that caused her to have to unpaid overtime (and her company has no interest in AI no less!). On the other hand, her company was and still is actively union busting by emailing anti-union shit and lying. Iirc, they even hired a firm for it.

So, out of spite for those jackasses lying about unions, please keep fighting! (Plus, why can’t the producers, like her, organize?)

I think that might be my plan too, but I’m still waiting a paycheck or two before I even monitor the situation. My 2070 is fine and ultimately I just want to pass it down to a spare PC for kids to mess around on as my oldest hits 3. I know my the time I hit 5 I was playing shit like Dune 2, admittedly with hacked save files my dad setup.

X is around the time FF lost it’s main architect, Sakaguchi (technically sooner , but dev times I imagine it overlapped). Guys a class act that was with them since the beginning, but he started his own company after a falling out with the direction SE brass wanted to take things. He was the one pushing to always have life and death as main themes and kept certain other producers in line.

I always recall an anecdote on FF7, as him, Kitase and Nomura were working out story. Sakaguchi required a meaningful death in the plot. Kitase (who we can thank for FF6s second half) suggested the whole cast die except one who the player chooses. Nomura talked them down from that. FF7 was his baby (so much so that he’s the character designer and artist), hence why he’s so present on the remake. That said, they kept each other in check and Nomura gets really weird ideas (KHs being his lead, for example).

After Sakaguchi departure, 11 was modeled after EverQuest and had a newish team, 12 was written most by FFT scenario team but had a change mid devolpment midway (the SE brass wanted a plucky young protag, Vaan was late development), 13 was so overbudget that they had to make sequels to recoup costs, 14 1.0 was mostly old guard 11 people with no idea about optimization, 14 2.0 was Yoshida learning from WoW success (flaws and all) but adding “FF theme park” plus a great writing staff, 15… similar to 12 in changes mid production, but iirc it was the SE brass shoehorning bad ideas and plot required DLC, and 16 is Yoshida and his core team making a pretty solid ARPG but with some tedium due to his MMO roots (and if you like 7R you’d probably be ok with 16).

Anyone can like or dislike a game, so I’m just giving you the long range of production issues that are objectively damaging the experience. It’s ok to like flawed games. I know an unhealthy amount of video game industry lore, and the biggest thing I can’t even say because of an NDA. lol

(Bonus fun fact, FF6 was meant to end at the halfway point but was so ahead of schedule and funds they went ahead and created the second half. It’s my favorite FF lol)

The old Westwood studios would approve, if they weren’t murdered by EA decades ago.

Try out Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2. It’s one of those JRPG games with a lot of mysteries and loose threads and every single one of them end up solved by the end.

I also haven’t had a reason to go there, haha. Probably soon for diapers, though, as Target is also shooting itself in the foot.

And somehow, Costco? Weird twist.

Iirc, Steam policy is to allow no-strings-attached refunds if that happens, and it indeed has happened before. I don’t see Sony reneging, just doing as stated which is to provide incentives to log in.

I have the base game and didn’t know that, thank you random Internet person! $10 is indeed a good deal.

Dragon Quest 9 on DS (emulated). Prior to this I was playing Kingdom Hearts Recoded also on DS (emulated). My recommendation is to enjoy what retroachievements does to your old favorites, lol (can’t wait for DOSBox integration).

I’m generally a PC gamer but I was playing the steam ports of Kingdom Hearts (they are bad ports) and now I’m just emulating things. Can you believe those lunatics lumped 4 games of achievements into a single set without any order? There’s even duplicate names for things, it’s a wildly sloppy port, lol. Not recommended.

It’s a game in my todo list, but pretty low on that list. Actually, speaking to getting closer to that design, you’d think 20XX (and I guess 30XX but I didn’t play) gets even closer. It certainly scratched my MMX itch in an interesting way.

Oh, a lovely game and so is it’s sequel. I recently gave a spare copy to a student of mine, too, so it was on my mind when I read this post. Enjoy!

My worst offender would be the Neptunia games I’ve played (which I genuinely liked for gameplay lol) but honestly, if your gaming family can’t accept you at your Nep, they don’t deserve you at your NepNep.

So… A regular Assassins Creed game. Mind, I stopped at Rogue.

Tbh, this isn’t a terrible idea for people who tend to use a guide anyway? Depending on how perfectionist I feel, that’s sometimes me (but the ideal game doesn’t lock you out of content over a joke answer in a random dialog).

Obligatory mention that ExoDos exists. Look it up.

Y’know, I kind of get why a storefront would prefer delisting when there’s just a more complete or more “HD” version. I’ve had a friend buy an old version of a game for the same price as the “complete” version since both were up and he didn’t check. Blizzard is obviously just trying to promote their remake, but I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

(I’d still prefer having options, though, and that option should be free because playing the DOS version of Warcraft 2 would likely help promote the HD version, as sort of a demo. That game is fire and deserves the love, too bad the execs are morons).

I’ll have you know that’s a chastity cage and Yoko Taro put himself in that position in preparation for the next big thing!

You don’t watch football while playing football? What else is the jumbotron even good for?

Yeah, the sorcerer subclass. From what I understand it’s not the cow-falling-from-the-sky good times from BG2 though. Might need mods for real craziness.

Man, I still haven’t had time to do my wild mage run. Granted a friend wanted in on that for the shenanigans.

While that take is correct in 98% of circumstances, this isn’t one of them for a couple of reasons. BG3 has enough content at release to play for several years and have different experiences each time. The fact that it’s getting free additional content is more so because of people making the game popular in it’s first year, showing that CRPGs aren’t dead, etc. The game won literally every GotY award, for crying out loud.

There’s not a ton of other games I’d say this is bad take, but you know, it’s like complaining about Terraria or Dead Cells or something. At some point you get the game and you return to it periodically.

The only two reasons to put it off? You’re too poor or you don’t have time for a 300+ hour time investment. It’s not gonna get a steep discount anytime soon, though.

I imagine with denuvo he’ll have to wait a moment before he can sail the seas. Not too long, though.

Hold yourself over with emulated DQ 1 and 2!

I adore the first trilogy of DQ games but I’m holding off cause I don’t like or trust SE anymore (plus, denuvo, ugh).

I will say, it’s a better experience to play 1 thru 3 in order with no prior knowledge of what makes them a trilogy. Having 3 stand alone kind of misses that “oh fuuuuuuuck” realization I got to experience (and subjected a friend to, who has yet to forgive me lol). It’s what made 3 one of my favorites next to 5 and 11.

I agree. I wish we could get a deck mini at the very least. I miss my hacked PSP for that reason, it has a good size for emulation. A PSP sized PC would be insane.

This tracks, I almost exclusively play Balarto on my deck. A lot of those last almost a whole day on battery with how undemanding they are (and did you know you can undervolt games? I run a copy of Phantasy Star Online at 3w and it lasts 8 hours).