AnnoyingFrenzy

@imgrowinglegs This is a fairly difficult question to answer as Steins;Gate is a bit of an outlier in the series. Its the only game in the series that doesn't rely on concepts from previous entries to get the full story. For example, while I would say if you liked Steins;Gate you would like Robotics;Notes, that game relies on concepts from Chaos;Head to fully understand whats going on and thus I would recommend playing Chaos;Head first. But Chaos;Head is wildly different from Steins;Gate and I can't safely say you'd enjoy it just from liking S;G

Chaos;Head NoAH is MUCH darker than S;G and is way heavier on the science aspect of the series while also being much less grounded in reality (the game is about making your delusions exist in reality after all). There is a strong chance you will hate the main character for most of the story, maybe the whole game. He is written to be a pathetic degenerate that can't do anything for himself, which I personally found annoying and he doesn't get real character development until the end. I also mentioned this in another comment, but the localization for Chaos;Head is pretty poor and I recommend getting this game on PC and installing a fanpatch made by Committee of Zero to get the full experience of the title. While you can read the other games in series without reading Chaos;Head, I would pretty much consider it required reading for most of the series to get the full experience. The main "gameplay mechanic" of Chaos;Head are delusion triggers, where periodically the MC will be able to play a usually humorous or disturbing scene in his head (or are they just in his head). Chaos;Head NoAH is around 50 hours long and has 9 routes. Unlike in S;G where you could get every ending as you played, you need to read the previous 8 to get to the true ending and can't get any of the other routes before completing the first one. I recommend using a guide to find all the endings, getting them requires choosing specific delusions throughout the game.

Robotics;Notes Elite is lighter in tone than Steins;Gate and its protagonist is more of a normal dude, albeit it a lazy and snarky one. Like Chaos;Head it also leans very hard into the science aspect of the series, this time its about robots and AR (augmented reality). I personally thought the story moved a little slow as the conspiracy stuff doesn't really come up to the forefront of the story until over halfway through but the character writing is some of the best in the series. There are also abundant references to events from Chaos;Head as well as parts in story that allude to the science concepts established in that game without explaining them, youre expected to just know which is why I recommend reading C;H first, but it is still readable without. If you liked Steins;Gate you'd most likely like Robotics;Notes. You WILL need a guide though. Unlike in S;G and C;H there are no true character routes. R;N is a linear story, they just took the middle chapters of the story and let you read them in any order. They way you access these is a tad obtuse. In S;G you responded to people in e-mails throughout the game and in R;N you respond to people on Twitter. How you respond to people determines which chapter you get to read next, so you might read Chapter 8 before your read Chapter 6. Those middle chapters are largely self-contained so its not too much of a problem, but they do occasionally make a reference to something that happened and you would have no idea.

@Lizuka That is very true. Do not play Steins;Gate 0 first, do not play Chaos;Child before Chaos;Head, do not play Robotics;Notes DaSH before Robotics;Notes Elite (although personally I would say don't play DaSH at all). Funnily enough, MDE is also a midquel to Steins;Gate and shouldn't be played first, albeit a very non-canon one.

@Kidfunkadelic83 I agree with Lizuka. For a first visual novel with a darker tone Danganronpa is a good place to start although I'd argue that only the first and third games are truly dark. Unlike your more kinetic visual novels, Danganronpa has actual gameplay. Games like Steins;Gate is 99% reading with the occasional prompt that decides which ending you get. That said, if you are fine that, Steins;Gate is a must play along with Steins;Gate 0, both are dark and gritty (you can skip My Darling's Embrace if you don't want cutesy).

For anyone looking for recs in the comment section, my personal favorite would be the Danganronpa trilogy (not S), the Steins;Gate games, Robotics;Notes Elite and Chaos;Child. AI: The Somnium Files was pretty good too although I didn't enjoy it as much as the others.

@Lizuka i wouldn't get Chaos;Head on switch personally. The localization is pretty poor. I got it on Steam with a fan patch that fixes a lot of the problems as well as added some cut content from the original release.

Im very curious to see where Anonymous;Code falls on the sliding scale of SciAdv titles. Will it be an amazing 10/10 like Steins;Gate or Chaos;Child, a solid 8/10 title like Chaos;Head, Robotics;Notes or Steins;Gate 0, or 5/10 trash like Robotics;Notes DaSH. I'll be picking this up on PC for ease of a potential CoZ patch.

Do the other two include invaluable maps and strategic playing tips? Clear winner here.

Metroid Prime Remastered honestly. Only 10/10 game from this year I played, including ToTK.

Does it include the DLC though? Turnabout Reclaimed and Turnabout Time Traveler are top tier cases

Love BoTW, but I love the older style of Zelda's more. The progression and puzzles in those games just felt more rewarding to me personally. This style is fine, I plan on getting ToTK eventually, but this new Zelda is no longer a day one buy for me.

I have nothing against her or the cast of BoTW, but I did not think the game had good voice acting. ToTK is an improvement, but not much better from what I've heard. But VA is not why I play Zelda anyway so its kinda whatever.

The characters overall were a bit too one dimensional for me to love them like in Three Houses, but my personal favs were Yunaka, Chloe, Alcryst and Zelkov. Unless add the Fell Xenologue, then Zelestia, Gregory and Madeline are up there as well.

"You'll get no sympathy from me."

This movie Peach and the game Peach have one thing in common from my perspective; I find neither compelling as a character.

Will the previous Bayonetta games help me get a significant other first? Otherwise, we might be fighting a losing battle here.

I will never understand why Ada Wong is so popular. She's so boring. Oh wait, it's because she's hot isn't it.

@Scooby-Doo User name and profile pic checks out.

Easily a top 5 3DS game and my personal favorite rhythm game ever!

I honestly expect them to be all cloud editions and not worth getting. At least they are coming through for the people that prefer the option.

Even though I like the dynamic pose for Japan more, the NA version is too iconic for me personally to vote against.

Im still surprised that, with the amount of publicity Roy gets among Fire Emblem and Smash Bros, that they haven't tried to release the game in the west.

Am I the only one that was underwhelmed by the trailer? There were some interesting new mechanics and enemies, but nothing for me to really sink my teeth into. Hopefully, they either show more or the new mechanics are interesting enough to hook me into exploring Hyrule again.

Gotta control myself so I can get the physical release.

@Violator Epic, I'll take em all

@Mando44646 I don't play fortnite, but I have always viewed it like this; You don't play as Geralt or Ryu or Naruto or whatever, you play as a dude cosplaying as them. Kinda like Mii Fighter outfits in Smash Bros. I do agree that these crossovers would be far more interesting if the source IP was utilized more.

Steins;Gate is a masterpiece. But if you're going to play it, play the original VN on Steam and skip Elite. It being fully animated is nice, but it cuts out content (like the entire first half of Faris' chapter) and it railroads you into one path instead of giving the player more agency (outside of the obvious end of chapter choices that give you different endings) Elite is still great. But the original VN is better imo.

The ? Block, NES, Bowser and Atari were all very well made sets (if a tad expensive, but that's par for the course with LEGO). Would definitely keep my eyes peeled for Zelda sets.

I'm a little surprised it's going with male Alear considering all the promotion the female version has been getting. Still, it is fantastic that they are doing this for Fire Emblem now, I wonder if it'll be a one-time thing or something they plan on releasing alongside them from now on. The series is almost perfect for the format.

Maybe the ESRB will slap an addiction warning on the label for parents to continue to ignore.

@IronMan30 I can't talk about the newer ones, but Modern Warfare 2 (original) was actually anti-US military (The main villain of the game is a US General after all) and in Modern Warfare 1 the American squad gets nuked due to their "no man left behind" policy and failed repeatedly before that. I haven't played since MW3 though, so I don't know about the newer ones.

All looks like what I expected honestly. I like the look overall.

Congratulations Game Freak, you've killed happiness. There is nothing left in the world to bring joy anymore. You've brainwashed the masses into buying your "video game" which is, by all accounts, actually the antichrist in digital form. This game personally offended me, burned down the orphanage, killed my grandma, poisoned the water supply, and unleashed a plague upon all our houses. It's unleashed naught but despair upon the world, from which there shall be no recovery. We as a society are doomed forevermore.

And to all those 10 million people that have already bought the game, I have only one thing to say to you. I hope you enjoy your purchase and have fun with it.

I didnt get the game myself, but I'm seeing a lot of people really enjoying the game. A friend of mine who hates Sword and Shield loves this one. Honestly I'm seeing fewer people complaining about the quality of this game then people complaining about dexit last gen.

As someone whose first Fire Emblem was Three Houses and put over 450 hours into it... this looks fine. Not a fan of the seemingly overreliance on nostalgia. I'll see how it looks at release, but I may end up just being a Three Houses fan instead of a Fire Emblem fan.

@Nua I know, just a bit of tongue-in-cheek.

This is a good thing though right? Remember how Super Mario 64 had patched out the BLJ and everyone complained?

Also this kind of reminds me of how in Banjo-Kazooie nuts and bolts you can get access to super kart parts before you even enter the first world by getting one of the starter crates, standing on top of it, then lifting up your kart to get over a wall.

These are the behind the scenes stories I live for. I wish more games had Developer Commentary tracks, like what Valve had in the Orange Box

@FX29 Yeah, Im currently 205 hours in and never encountered any bugs. Also really hoping for some DLC, like adding more playable characters, more supports, more classes, better endings etc.

So far every new character is basically "They're a nice person who likes x thing". Where are my Felix's and Hubert's and Bernadetta's and Henry's and Tharja's and Owain's and Leo's and Ilyana's and ...

I couldn't help but notice she still hasn't specified how much she wanted for the role.

If the songs are good and mesh well with the movie then I'm down. Almost all of my favorite animated movies are musicals anyway. Thank God they didn't use Martinet then though, can't imagine his mario voice surviving a long musical number.

I just hope they don't ride the nostalgia for the old MC's and devote some time to actually fleshing out the new characters and stories. Nothing they've shown so far has really gripped me. I guess I'm just worried because they made Marth take up half the game's boxart.

I don't really see the problem with it, looks like Mario. If there's one thing Illumination does well, its unoffensive animation.

@Aneira I was looking at if from a story perspective, and I can't really speak for Super since I didn't play it, but in the original Street Fighter 2 the main character was Guile or Chun Li. Ryu has pretty much nothing to do with the plot. I don't believe he was in the opening for the game either. This is even reflected in the live-action movie where Guile is clearly the protagonist. Street Fighter 3 the main character is definitely Alex, especially if we are using the opening as our basis of measure. Street Fighter 4 has Ryu as an MC, but along with plenty of other people as well. Ryu is definitely the face of the franchise though, no arguments there. My only point was that if there was an anime based on the Street Fighter franchise, Ryu being the MC is not a given seeing as the story of the games hasn't always focused on him either.

@Serpenterror I agree with your overall point, but I find your example funny since Ryu isn't even the main character in all the mainline Street Fighter games (Unless you are referring only to the original Street Fighter instead of the series, in which case disregard).

Now is as good a time as any to lay down my hot take on this game.

It was okay.

Only thing I know about Dunkey is that, like all popular media, he has the worst fans.

I have just finished the fantastic Danganronpa trilogy, so this came out at the perfect time

I like Sakurai. I think hes a great game developer and I do believe he puts his own unique flairs into games he works on. In that sense, yes, Smash Bros without Sakurai won't be the same. But Sakurai developing the series was never going to be the reason I played Smash anyway. If another developer can come along and bring along his own ideas and flairs I don't see the problem. Smash doesn't need Sakurai to be Smash.

Side note: Every smash bros game is distinct from each other, so it's not like Sakurai himself even had a consistent style with which he worked.

A rose by any other name. Please Square, choose any other name.