naxuu

"you are never surprised by the presence of an EMMI, as they only exist in certain zones."

If I had one criticism it would be this: I was really expecting the game to destabilize your comfort zones later on, by putting you up against an EMMI that is capable of operating throughout the entire map and stalking you anywhere. "you thought you could breathe safe outside of EMMI zones? think again!" what a missed opportunity.

I actually wouldn't doubt if this idea was thrown around and maybe was even initially planned, but maybe they decided that it actually wasn't fun and was overly difficult when they prototyped it.

psst, if any devs are reading this: it would make for a killer DLC.

It's an interesting discussion, but in my opinion he suffers from analyzing Dread through the lens of previous games that it's not even attempting to replicate. Dread might be scary/tense but there's no survival horror in its DNA, so the comparison to Resident Evil feels like apples and oranges. A traditional "pure stealth" game like Metal Gear isn't what the game is aiming for either. Dread's EMMI moments are something new that might be like "frantic stealth" or "twitch stealth". The mix of stealth+speed felt really fresh to me and while there's not a lot of time to react, plan, and strategize, there's JUST ENOUGH time to do it and make the most of your environments. It's a really skillful balance and it's sort of miraculous they pulled it off as well as they did.

I'm also just starting to reengage with anime after years of being out of touch. I'm in the middle of Made in Abyss, which is FANTASTIC but sadly not available on Crunchyroll. If it helps anyone, here's what my Crunchyroll watchlist looks like at the moment:

Berserk (Dark Souls fans will feel at home here)
Kaiji
The Promised Neverland
Death Note
Mind Game (movie)
The Place Promised In Our Early Days (movie)
Puella Magi Madoka Magica (already seen and loved this - don't be fooled by appearances, it's a brutal deconstruction of magical girl tropes)
Kino's Journey
Boogiepop Phantom
Time of Eve

Switch: I can play Dark Souls portably and it runs well.
Steam Deck: I can play Elden Ring portably and it runs well.

Pretty much says it all, for me. I'll be keeping my Switch OLED, mostly due to Switch exclusives as well as that OLED screen outclassing the Deck's screen. But Steam Deck is going to open up entire new realms of portable gaming that weren't possible before. Now to just receive that order email from Steam... any day now... aargh

The people at my gym will surely appreciate me watching Berzerk while I do my elliptical cardio.

The tactics gameplay looks amazing. I'm only worried about the story now that I've seen this trailer. Specifically the combination of convoluted political intrigue, high formal speech, grand pronouncements, and seeming lack of much humor or anyone talking like ordinary folk. FF Tactics managed to pull this all off (in large part to having fantastic writers who cared about philosophical depth and worldbuilding), but just barely, and I think it's easier to tip into unintentional parody than it is to get the high-wire act right. I really really hope it's not the most tedious plot and dialogue ever, because there's going to be a lot of it.

I genuinely don't understand the pricing on this thing. The Steam Deck cost me $400 and appears to be similar in terms of performance. How is this company expecting to sell these at a nearly $1k markup over the Deck?

Zelda II - I loved the hell out of it, and did play it to completion as a kid without any guides. It's such a hard game to talk about, because all the stuff that people dislike about it are the things that made it so special to me. The cryptic, obtuse puzzles and odd translations only added to the mystical, otherworldly feeling of the game. In a way, the entire game felt like a secret to be uncovered. Which is perfectly in keeping with Zelda I. I remember the RPG systems being pretty hard to understand and hidden from the player as well, but that also made the game interesting! Also, yes, it had a high difficulty, but the challenge really made the game especially worth tackling, and it was never so hard or unfair that I never wanted to even try. Tackling a difficult dungeon felt like true victory, in the way beating a boss in Dark Souls feels. It really is a proto-Dark Souls and sincerely felt that way when I played it upon release. I think it was a miraculous game and for me it ranks among the best entries in the series. If there's one Zelda game that's begging for a very thoughtful modern remake that keeps all of these strong qualities while introducing enough balance and QoL for modern gamers to not quit it immediately, it's this one. (Failing that, the Soulsborne games scratch the same itch - but imagine the almighty Nintendo returning to their weird, difficult roots and nailing it even better than From!)

Tencent seems pretty awful based on what I've just read about them. Liu Cixin being involved as a writer (well, "collaborator") is probably the most exciting part of this, though. If it's really like Monster Hunter meets BOTW, with a Hugo Award winning science fiction author at the helm, then it seems hard to ignore in terms of pure ambition and scope, regardless of which execrable company is involved.

@Leprecorn Pikmin Grow is SUCH a great name, where do I sign a petition to make it happen. It's not too late, Niantic.

Considering a screen-first fall of this nature is exactly how I cracked the screen of my Microsoft Surface Pro, I have to emphasize this is a really really bad idea. But I totally forgot about this mode and how you can just lean the tablet against something. Should look great with the OLED screen.

If you like JRPGs, you owe it to yourself to play Phantasy Star IV. It's fast-paced and highly playable, and I would say it's nearly on par with the SNES Final Fantasies. Which is high praise indeed.

I don't think the price is outlandish. That said, my Steam Deck will be an emulation monster so I don't need the N64 or Genesis games, and the Animal Crossing DLC is too late since I fell out of my daily obsession with that game a long time ago. So I'll probably pass.

I'm slightly torn on getting this for Switch OLED now or waiting for my Steam Deck to arrive. Hashtag first world problems. I suppose the experience will be more or less the same. They patched the PC version yesterday for adjustable text size.

The "we"/"our" writing convention is strained to breaking point in this article, lol.

@TheRealKyleHyde it controls great on a Switch Lite, for what it's worth. Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to sell this thing when my OLED model arrives.

Edit: I just checked and I'm using the analog joystick anyway, although the Lite's d-pad also works well. I think it plays fine either way, personally.

Looks like it's up for preorder on the Nintendo eShop. USD $29.99, but there's a preorder discount of 20% off which brings it to $23.99. That sounds pretty reasonable as I suspect this game will be massive.

I have to say this looks HIGHLY interesting to me. In the absence of an Etrian Odyssey for the system (please, we've been patient), it looks like it might scratch a similar itch. It's like a game that would result if you were to take the punishing dungeon maps and complex turn-based encounters of the Bard's Tale trilogy from the 80s and deconstructed them into a kind of Sudoku-like metagame based on the maps you'd have to craft out of graph paper. As someone pushing 40 I instinctively get the weird OG influences here but I wouldn't expect anyone much younger to, necessarily, so I wonder if this will be a super niche and misunderstood game. They certainly seem to be doing some interesting, novel, and twisted things with both the dungeon crawling system and the battle system. It might be Square Enix's most hardcore RPG in years... ever?

Can I just say - "grinding" mechanics have gotten a reputation in recent years as being a hallmark of bad design, and I think it's undeserved at least some of the time. It's really about context. I hate grinding when I'm playing a game in front of the TV, but on a handheld it can be relaxing to dip into some of those repetitive tasks for a bit here and there, in pick-up-and-play-for-a-minute fashion. This is one such case, since these games are really made for handheld. When we're talking about grinding DSS cards in CotM, 1) no one is forcing you to, as mentioned above 2) mild spoiler: you can start a second playthrough after your first with all 20 DSS cards in so-called "Magician Mode", and 3) let's be real, grinding for a card is something that will take you minutes, not hours. This is no Monster Hunter game with rare drops from punishing bosses. It's a very fast-paced game that will take most people under 10 hours, with maybe a couple more hours added if you want to 100% using the new gadget that tells you which enemies are carrying which cards.

I guess I'm a Castlevania contrarian (unintentionally). Have been playing the series from the very beginning, and the two that absorbed me the most into their worlds were Circle of the Moon, and Castlevania 2. In retrospect, both are probably the most "Souls-like" of the series, and the Souls series became my favorite of all time after they came out. I still strongly believe that the Souls series were heavily influenced by the Castlevanias, particularly Castlevania 2.

It's a trip to play CotM now compared to original release, since playing it on an early model GBA was SO dark that it was like you were spelunking in a cave. I wish M2 had developed a filter that was like "bad light source beaming down on a non-backlit GBA screen" just to reproduce the original experience.

I love all you people calling the added membership tier a "ripoff" without any of us knowing what the price is yet. Comedy gold

@Tokio_Morishima That was helpful, thanks for typing all of it out. I had the distinct sense from reading the review that at least half of the supposed flaws mentioned were actually positives and unique design elements that were misunderstood, and that I would actually love. Cryptic, divisive art that deliberately misdirects and confuscates is my catnip. I will probably pick the game up. I'm always thankful when a bad review gets me excited.

(And I couldn't believe that 100-question quiz that veers off into your opinions on movies, music, etc. was cited as an example of a bad thing - rather than, like, an absolute delight to encounter.)

There's no way they're going to spend the big bucks to license all the original tracks from these soundtracks. And the music is such a huge part of the enjoyment of these games. I'm thinking these might be a good candidate for "play the originals on a Steam Deck instead"

lmao at Mario Picross beating out the likes of Breath of Fire II and Super Ghouls N Ghosts

I managed to snag a white OLED model from Gamestop as soon as it went live. Excited for it. I might be the exact target audience in a way: bought a Switch Lite since I only play handheld, and I loved everything about it except the tiny screen as I mostly like playing text-heavy, complex RPGs and the like, and it's often rather difficult to see important UI elements and dialogue. It's been fine and I never bothered to move to the normal Switch, but now I'm jumping at the chance for a refreshed model with a luxuriously big screen to play on. I'm fine with going from the smallest model to the biggest model; it's gonna feel like a significant upgrade when it arrives.

There was a wild card introduced just an hour before preorders went live: the Steam Deck is the first direct competitor to Switch worth taking seriously in my opinion, and the only one that can actually sway me over and get me playing PC games again. Luckily you only need to pay a $5 initial buy-in to preorder, so I'm OK with preordering that as well tomorrow. Guess I'm doubling down on handheld this gen instead of a PS5; it's how I've played games for half a decade now anyway, so makes sense.

I'm surprised no one seems to be talking about resolution. I had an OG Switch, then when that got lost on a plane, I replaced it with a Lite. Going from regular to Lite, the screen was just a smidge too small for text-dense RPGs, but overall games looked "better" on the Lite - because it had the same resolution but tinier pixels, everything looked sharper and slightly less blocky. So now all three models have the same resolution but different sizes of screens. My worry is that going from Lite to OLED, things will look noticeably less sharp and more pixelated, and I don't know whether that trade off is worth it for a bigger, brighter and more vibrant screen. I think it is and I'm ready to preorder any day now (RPGs play much better with a big screen, ultimately), but like - that's not even in the CONVERSATION and I think it should be.

Oh my god, this is all I ever wanted. The 3 best games in the entire series, as far as I'm concerned. (OK I'm not familiar with the DS games to be fair so I'm not sure how they stack up to the GBA ones, but the GBA ones hold a special place in my heart!)

I appreciate his commitment to the bit.

Pixelated Milk is a very small indie developer based in Poland - from a quick search, they fall in the range of 11-50 employees. I'm actually quite floored at the production values here - they appear to be punching WAY above their weight with this one. Looks fantastic, I'm rooting for them!

Perception: I can recreate the full Ocarina of Time on this!
Reality: It took me a month, but I can recreate the first screen of Zelda I where you enter the cave. Hoping to finish the cave with the old man and Link picking up the wooden sword by 2022

Considering the nature of this game and what the developer is willing to do, I wouldn't be surprised if there's much more to this "plus" version than those bulletpoints suggest. I mean it's just speculation, but if you think about it we really have NO idea what we're in for, even if you've played the freeware game on PC already. If I were putting myself in the developer's shoes, the temptation would be high to take this opportunity to go way further and get people talking all over again.

I imagine some commenters also look at new album releases and say "Ugh, I've never heard of any of these. There's absolutely no Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead OR Beyonce on here. Therefore it's all trash"

This seems like a game that is designed to frustrate REVIEWERS, but not necessarily players. I'm guessing I can easily play this in the background here and there while doing real work at my job every weekday. I don't necessarily have to think about the game, or ponder why it exists or what it's doing. I don't have to review it or rate it or explain it to anyone. I can kind of just live with it as an ambient, nearly subliminal experience (that nonetheless has some progression and long-term stuff going on). As a player that seems to have some merit. But it's not what reviewers do, fundamentally. You need to play for at least a few hours or so, intentionally, with critical lenses on, then write X amount of words on it and judge the experience. That seems antithetical to the experience of the game, inherently! No one is to blame, of course, but it means that any single review is not going to be an indicator of what this game is actually like to people who intend to be in for the long haul, for varying values of "in".

I'm bothered by her unnaturally long legs

I played this thing on repeat a bunch when it went viral earlier today, and sure enough, the more I listened to it, the more my ears acclimated and I started really liking it. What really makes it, in my opinion, is when the bassline is introduced on top of the already dissonant elements, creating a third layer of dissonance - but that bassline goes hard nonetheless, without apology. By no rights should it work, and yet it's really unique and refreshing to my ears. Kinda reminds me of the sorts of tracks you'd hear at a rave or on an obscure UK techno compilation circa '89-91.

Plus - I mean, it got all of our attention, right? It's so rare to find any music that raises eyebrows at all these days. So that's a point in its favor!

Graphics-wise, rather than Skyrim it sits somewhere between Daggerfall (1996) and Morrowind (2002). Not a good look if it's not done as an intentional aesthetic (and it doesn't seem to be).

The Guardian Legend was and still is my favorite NES game. Not only is it not on the list, but no one in the comments has mentioned it yet either, so it must be criminally slept on.

Edit: it's not in the database either. Can you guys add it?

I'm predicting the unofficial "Gaia" or "Quintet" trilogy of Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, and Terranigma. These are all a blast to play and never seem to get the love they deserve, and are more than due for the remake treatment.

To echo other comments, my PSP did this and I used the feature often. Even better, my PSP was easily hacked to run a wide variety of retro console games, effectively turning it into a solid retro games machine that could be portable or docked. Pretty sweet little system.

I'm waiting for Bravely Default II Second

It wasn't available to everyone, no. If you bought a physical copy of the game in Poland or a digital copy on the Polish eShop, then you had access to Polish audio and subtitles. All or nearly all other regions didn't. The language situation in general has been shockingly bad and I'm glad to see some action being taken now.

Downloadable language packs would be nice! You know, the ones we were promised. So we can play the game we bought in our language of choice. All of the language content is already there, it really shouldn't be taking this long to add it in.