Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Sunsy Your Sonic tee looks a lot like the one I lost years ago! That's definitely a cool one. That's a nice assortment of Trolls merch you have as well.

I wanna try to get Pac-Man World Re-Pac as well, hopefully if it sells well or something, they'd remake PMW2 later down the road. Yes you're totally right! We all love plushies, that's nothing to be ashamed of. There's another plush I have, that's a star from the Mario series. I've had it for over a decade.

@Tyranexx Yeah thanks! It's pretty much who can finish the game and roll the credits first.

I'm sure that'll be the case for MK8D DLC. I was pretty happy with how the courses turned out, and some of my favorites did make the cut, such as Coconut Mall and Shroom Ridge. Yeah, that's fine. I'd say if you really like the base game and what the DLC offers, then I'd recommend getting it. You could wait until more tracks are revealed too.

@tekoii I didn't really expect an announcement just going by that 711 thing anyway. lol

@Tyranexx It’s a good and bad thing that you mention DDLC… because while my next cover is a song from DDLC, it doesn’t have a dark twist! The song in question (it’s from the Plus edition) is meant to be melancholic so it already is dark in that way.

I’d love to do this one next though, this is easily one of my favourites from the game and it isn’t even in it! It’s similarly melancholy.

I’m of the opinion that Princess Mononoke has one of the best Japanese to English localisations. Neil Gaiman wrote the script after all, he’s a really popular author in the UK. He wrote Stardust and Good Omens, among others. It has a great English cast too, Billy Crudup (Big Fish), Claire Danes (Stardust), Billy Bob Thornton, Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting) and more. Such an amazing film.

As an update to my purchase of an android tablet, I’ve been enjoying having it so far!

Looks wise, the form factor and materials make it feel like a really large iPod touch, but it’s considerably smaller and lighter than the iPad Air… And having an new device that can use my old android apps and purchases has been fun.

I put Apple Music on it, and the sleep timer I had on my old phone as well, disabled most notifications, and installed all the usual movie streaming apps. So it’s a nice media center. I also can play my GBA and DS game backups on it very competently, which is a nice bonus.

Performance wise, it can stutter every now and then when switching apps and stuff, and for some reason the first time I turned it off, the SD card corrupted randomly, so I had to redownload a bunch of stuff. Thankfully that hasn’t happened again. Battery life has been amazing, interestingly enough.

@Sunsy ya he was small from what I remember of him.

I just remembered his name was Bob the Bee

@seaboyluca It’s a sign!

YouTube isn't exactly known for insightful comments, but every now and then, you come across the rare gems worth pondering.

I remember, when I was describing SMT V in the comment section of its NintendoLife page, I couldn't quite nail what bothered me about the game.

And then I came across this comment in a video titled "The problem with adventure movies today":

"It's sterile. There's no grit, no s** appeal, no messiness, no surprises … not one hair out of place that isn't placed just so to LOOK out of place. I've been feeling this for a while. The overreliance on CGI, the lack of chaos and chemistry, the shrink wrapped hollow quality to it all. It's unsettling and not in a good or interesting way."

I think I felt that way for a lot of movies today. They're all designed by a marketing team to appeal to as many demographics as possible, all pre-packaged with the right keywords and 'safe storylines' that guarantee a box office hit. Phase 4 of the MCU similarly suffers from this issue as well. I don't think a good story should be told in such an artificial and contrived manner by a bunch of PR guys, but maybe that's just me.

Similarly, SMT V, along with a couple of modern games, left me with that 'perfect exterior' but hollow interior feeling. Sure, we got improved graphics that blew Nocturne HD Remaster away, but it all feels like flash but no substance. The plot was so short, going through the motions of fighting one gym leade- I mean demon boss to another before the obligatory law/chaos/neutral/destroy choice pops up in the end. It felt like they were trying to inject a Persona storyline into an SMT title with its highschool bullying subplot, only to backtrack and ended up with an unsatisfying story thread that never felt resolved in a meaningful manner. It's as if the PR team threw together a bunch of incomplete plot threads that worked in past SMT/Persona games (bullying, finding yourself, fighting God and Satan, law vs. chaos) without doing the hard work of building the characters and the universe. Literally all the characters suffered for it and became under-developed because the writers were trying to tell five stories at once.

I think that's the real issue here. Instead of writers who tell a story, we now have a marketing team "doing what works in the past" and rehashing it. SMT IV, for example, felt distinctly different from SMT Nocturne in terms of storyline (samurai uncovering a conspiracy vs. a half-naked child rejecting gods and their ideals). I don't even need to explain what Strange Journey did differently because it might as well have been an entirely different franchise with its unique setting/plot. Each of those SMT titles were memorable in their own way, not just rehashing good things that came before, so I think "doing what works before" isn't exactly the best way to tell a story, and not just in terms of SMT but also other JRPGs and video game stories in general.

It's probably an unfair comparison, but such repetition was probably one reason why I grew out of Pokémon as I got older, only to be slightly intrigue again when Pokémon Legends spiced the story up with a different take. Digimon, on the other hand, has pretty much hammered its "oh no, evil dictator Digimon wants to wipe out the universe" plot as much as possible already, so I hope Digimon Survive will bring something different to the table.

Anyway, just food for thought that I wanted to get off my chest. I love SMT, but I think IGN had a point when it said "Persona with no heart." It does feel like it's trying to imitate Persona on some level because Persona's popular rather than doing its own unique take. Just saiyan.

I know this is not the site to talk about stuff like this but I'm heavily debating whether I should mod my "NEW" 2DS XL, since the eshop is closing. Could anyone send me a forum link or reddit link to help me make up my mind.

@Kermit1 when you say mod do you mean hacking it? Or just adding stuff on to it?

@Snatcher homebrew. (so hacking I guess)

@Kermit1 Homebrew involves pirated games though, which is against the rules...

Feel free to mod it and that, but I’m afraid any “learning resources” you’ll have to find on your own.

Don’t worry though, they’re not that hard to find. I modded an old 2DS myself (to use it to create backups of my physical DS games), and it was just a matter of following instructions.

Though do know there is the risk of bricking your console, so I would avoid experimenting on your only/main system.

I keep my 3DS and NDS games and machines stay original.
No hacking, no jailbreak.

@Maxenmus That's my issue with SMT V as well. I had played Persona 5 before getting SMT V and it felt like it was trying to mimic certain parts of that game. The supposed emphasis on characters that SMT V had felt extremely weak, and completely disjointed as far as gameplay and cutscenes went. The story wasn't very interesting either, and really lost its way at the end.

@TheJGG Yeah, it's a shame. I actually finished Persona 5 a long time ago, so I didn't really notice the difference until just now, when I looked back at SMT V. I don't think it's a complete disaster, but at the same time, you can kinda see how Atlus is starting to lose faith in the SMT mainline titles and want to cash in on the Persona hype instead (which is unnecessary as all the previous SMT incarnations have consistently been solid titles except for ONE black sheep, SMT:IV Apocalypse). I think Atlus just needs to let the SMT team do its own thing from now on.

@Kermit1 here ya go https://www.reddit.com/r/Roms/comments/o7a5e5/nintendo_3ds_xl...

Is anyone else going to play multiversus tomorrow? I’m not sure if I said this already Lmao, but I’m vary hyped!

@Snatcher
My hype is on Youtubers Life 2 PS4.
I have reached Silver League (got more than 100,000 subscribers) so far.
The money maker was from uploading videos of gameplay / live streaming / unboxing, etc.
I have experienced two games with similarities in gameplay style like Story of Seasons but with different activities (Epic Chef, Youtubers Life 2).
These games are pretty interesting for me as I have a lot of experiences from playing Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons games.

@Link-Hero True. My mistake. The reality is that people are using it for piracy very often, so I automatically associated it with piracy.

@Rambler Hey, my friend wrote this!!

Update on my weekend cooking plans: I did not, in fact, have any time to do a fun food project. I forgot that I had work to do, and a Dungeons and Dragons session, and a 15km bike ride planned. A fun weekend, but no all-day food prep!!

They added Daisy to Mario Strikers LOL.

That ends the internet apocalypse that began when she was first missing from the roster. Helps her artwork and design are both absolutely sick.

@KateGray
No worries, there's always next weekend.

... I hope.