I guess that’s probably fair. I never had huge issues with them but it’s been a hot minute since I last played through.

A remaster like this is pointless in the first place, it’s not meaningfully doing anything to make people play it who wouldn’t otherwise. A proper Nightdive-style remake is what the game deserves.

Clean sock?

Additionally, “EE-pock” has the distinction of sounding as unpleasant as the word actually looks. I can’t quantify this opinion, but yeah, I think in addition to not sounding great, epoch also looks ugly.

I could not take this article seriously or absorb any meaningful information in it as I was too distracted by the unnecessary and overly long sudden hate boner paragraph for the word “epoch”. Who made a random retro game writer adjudicator and style guide for the English language?

Epoch is a great word, there is no confusion between it and “epic”, and you can use it just fine. It has a much better ring to it as the airship name in Chrono Trigger than “era” would and I find the author wrong on all counts.

I’m playing two games at once this week, firstly I’m playing bits and pieces of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword on my 3DS. It’s a really great game so far, super fun and surprisingly good at translating the mainline NG gameplay onto a handheld and using stylus input for controls. Might well end up one of my favourite DS/3DS games when I’m done with it. I’m about halfway through so far I think.

I’m also playing through Enotria: The Last Song on PC for the first time. So far I’m having a blast with it, after some initial information overload I’m finally starting to engage with the systems and am starting to really enjoy using the stances and elemental rock-paper-scissors. From what I’ve seen so far it does not really deserve its mixed steam reviews - yes, there is some jank and it’s plainly AA but there is a lot of good to make up for it. The world design is gorgeous, the level design is great with lots of verticality and the setting is so lovely and unique. I have heard it’s fairly short, and I do maybe concur that it might not merit a full price purchase, but I do think it’s worth wishlisting for a deep sale if you like the genre. I’m having a lot of fun with it so far.

Well, I am autistic so if I feel like I’ve stated something factually incorrect I wouldn’t put it past myself to look into something like that haha.

I want to say black was the dominant style through the 80s and then the silver/grey/brushed aluminium look made a comeback late nineties/around the millennium?

Talking out my ass here based on only rough childhood memories.

You’re right, I was never lucky enough to have one so my first thought was those silver grey VCRs of my childhood.

Doesn’t the VHS or whatever it’s supposed to be under the TV also look crooked?

Somehow I’d forgotten about Trepang2, thanks for the reminder! I might wait for an even deeper sale due to the length of my backlog but definitely wishlisted.

Lune was by far my favourite to use mechanically, the stains system just made for such fun planning of rotations. There is a lot of fun with various weapon combos too, like the Potierim support build that applies Greater Slow. I personally used her as AP and buff battery with Typhoon giving everyone max AP and refreshing greater versions of all buffs every turn. And then I used Braselim with Storm Caller and Lightning Dance to farm a tier 3 Gradient every turn.

The Genesis build is AP efficient but once you have 9 every turn it gets outdamaged by Lightning Dance (single target) and Hell (AoE). Though you wouldn’t guess so going by the astronomically poor and unclear skill descriptions.

I didn’t get Medalum either but honestly you don’t need it. The one shot builds only need it pre Cheater to start in Virtuoso, after that you can just Last Chance anyway.

I couldn’t beat it “fairly” either, but approaching it as a puzzle fight where you’re trying to figure out how to deal with its bullshit is also kind of fun. I ended up stunlocking it, which in itself you can do in several different ways. The game has a lot of fun things you can do with builds.

Or just Stendhal.

What difficulty setting were you playing on? I think Story mode post nerfs should be manageable even if you get hit a lot - at least as far as main story goes.

If you want to give it another shot, invest in HP and Defense, bring a healer and build Maelle as a tank with Egide you can also give yourself a lot of margins and sort of grind out encounters safely. There aren’t many DPS checks - if any.

Late game you can stack so much damage on Maelle that she one-shots everything, if you like.

Its a great game and worth trying to finish. Now as far as the optional superboss… Yeah, that’s another story.

250GB install sizes plus an additional 100GB shader caches. This is what the future looks like, buckle up.

I don’t know, to me everything I’ve heard about the Early Access versions of the companions sounds much better than what we ended up getting. The danger in wanting to please everyone and not wanting characters to be seen as abrasive or off putting is risking everyone feeling milquetoast instead.

But maybe you had to play it to understand why they were bad? I really should try to dig up some old footage.

Wyll is the character equivalent of eating cardboard.

“Well met”

Make sure you play the Mankind Divided DLCs after! A Criminal Past in particular is probably the best “new Deus Ex” content they ever put out.

Also, congrats on being made a mod! I literally cannot think of a better person for the role.

If the recent pathetic patent filings were not enough to finally wake you up to what an awful company Nintendo are I don’t know what to tell you.

Feels like this is the key part of the article:

But I think the passage of time has obscured just how much most of these critiques also applied to the original (and beloved) Hollow Knight. While Silksong’s bosses might be a little tougher, and its jumping challenges a little more precise, its predecessor was also often unforgiving and gated in almost the exact same ways (though some of this difficulty was eventually rebalanced). Only 22 percent of Hollow Knight’s Steam players have obtained the “Hollow Knight” achievement for reaching the first of the game’s multiple endings, and I’m willing to bet most of the remainder gave up out of frustration rather than boredom.

I’ve said this before but… what exactly were people expecting? I guess lots of people who never played HK jumped on the Silksong hype train just because the diehard fans were so rabid about it, and are now shocked at how hard the game they thought they were supposed to want turned out to be?

Existing IPs, maybe. But the real point of this patent is to stifle innovation and preempt competition. No indie developer is going to dare enter this creative space anymore as they don’t have the resources to challenge Nintendo’s patent - even though I think this won’t hold up in court.