Never had more than a sip and even that only in my mid twenties. The taste is vile to me and overpoweres absolutely anything, no matter what people tell me.

On top of that, I hate drunk people and not being fully in control of myself is something I’m deeply afraid of since I was little.

I don’t think I ever found a potion before clearing the area. I remember stocking up on food, like you, and eventually stumbling into the merchant selling me fire resistant armour.

Ignoring your uncalled for insult, that’s just not how I play games.

Once I was free of the tutorial area, I set off in a random direction and did my thing. I completed multiple divine beats before ever setting foot in Kakariko.

If I wanted to follow the direct path as described by NPCs, I might as well go play a linear game. I got to the destinations eventually, but almost never on the beated path.

It’s a game about free exploration, it’s silly to expect the player to directly follow these instructions. Just make him part of the mandatory tutorial area or have him come to you after collecting your first 10 seeds or something.

I only found out about the guy after finishing the game.

God of War 2018

I gave it a full playthrough, but since then it has pretty much become my definition of AAA slop.

• The game is littered with “puzzles”. The solution is always obvious within seconds and on top of that you get commentary on how to “solve” it. They just waste your time.

• Stats don’t matter. Early on you get your first weapon upgrade, I think I tripled my damage. The very next enemy got some commentary about “showcasing” my new weapon. It took the exact same amount of hits as the same enemy type did before ugrading my weapon. Since weapon upgrade materials are fixed drops from bosses, everything just scales alongside you.

• The battle system in general is a slog. 9 out of 10 times throwing your axe feels like the best option. Even the post game bosses are annoying at best.

• Also, why is the camera so darn close. Your “cinematic angles” mean shit when the gameplay suffers from it.

• There are so many “cutscenes” that have you walk at a snails pace. If your “gameplay” can be executed by a rubber band on my joystick, then just give me a proper cutscene. Annoying me isn’t immersive.

• You get awesome godly powers - for as long as cutscenes are running. Your super healing and mountain splitting punches mean nothing against any random draugr.

• Probably some more things, but it’s been a few years.

The story was fine, but I would have enjoyed watching a cutscene compilation more than playing the game. In fact that’s what I did your second entry.

Pokemon is owned by GameFreak, Creatures Inc and Nintendo. Roughly split in thirds.

However, Nintendo also owns an undisclosed amount of Creatures Inc and I think parts of GameFreak, making them the majority holder of Pokemon as a whole.

GameFreak does release other games on different platforms. Notably, they will release Beast of Reincarnation on everything but the Switch 2 this year.

Meanwhile I’m just surprised they had enough paying users to warrant a subscription cancelling movement.

Some free Silksong DLC, maybe?

I deal with crack and I’m fine! It’s those damn addicts who are the problem.

It’s the same thing every time. Someone tries to stop a corporation from preying on vulnerable people and others jump to its defense because they “aren’t affected”. Have some empathy, man.

I remember a fair share of fans complaining about the Demon’s Souls Remake. Apparently, while looking beautiful it got a ton of environmental details wrong and messed up a lot of the hidden lore along the way.

Now, this either confirms that FS too wasn’t happy about that or they simply cared less about Demon’s Souls to begin with - like you suggested. Regardless of the truth, while it does suck for Bluepoint, I too would prefer FS doing it themselves.

Still working through Shin Megami V Vengeance!

Finished the second main area, out of 4, I presume. By now the story has established the new group of antagonists and gave more screen time to the previously underused cast. There are enough new demons that I can barely keep up with fusing them all! But I always feel to need to collected them all in SMT/Persona. (Funnily enough, I never did in Pkmn.)

Finished the first route of AI: The somnium files!

Got Ota’s ending, which didn’t actually solve the case. Luckily, the game tells you about each branching path and you can freely jump to them.

The humor is hit or miss, but it did land with me and my partner. The mystery is fun and the characters are all around fun, too. We’ll do the other routes and then jump right into the sequel!

Man in the first panel isn’t funny and people call him out specifically. He should get better.

Woman in the second panel isn’t funny and people call all woman unfunny. Woman shouldn’t be comedians.

It’s about misogyny.

It probably has the best translation tooling. On top of that, they even learn it as their second language.

But I don’t think that’s a major factor. The UK always had special privileges within the EU and was probably just the most susceptible major country for the idea of leaving.

Thanks for asking, but there isn’t yet. I’ve dabbled around quite a bit and wan’t to focus on actually finishing something this year. Maybe for the next one.

Over the last two years, I’ve often lost my drive to continue since there are always new shiny ideas that are far more interesting than doing a lot of the menial work game dev involves. Kinda the opposite of your problem, really.

Didn’t game too much this holiday season and I want to focus more on making games instead of playing them this year - let’s see how that one is working out.

Anyhow, got in a good chunk of SMT V Vengeance! The QoL stuff is awesome, but it’s still pretty similar to the original - just with more quests and demons along the way . I don’t mind since I loved the original game, but if you didn’t it likely not worth it.

Started Ai: The Somnium Files! Decided to play through some detective games with my partner. This one is a great start! I like the characters, it’s both fun and has a good mystery. I’ll probably go through the entire series + rain code, then do the Ace Attorney games. Are there other games like this?

At this point getting slandered by Israel seems more like a badge of honor. I don’t even want a nation committing an ongoing genocide to like me.

First of all, I plan on clearing my backlog:

• Octopath 2
• Nioh 2
• 13 Sentinels
• P5 Tactica

Besides that, I have a few things on my mind:

• Hundred Line Defense
• Final Fantasy Tactics A2
• Xenosaga 1-3 (or maybe the rumored remake?)
• FF 7
• Persona 4
• Dragon Quest 1-3 Remakes

Probably already too many RPGs for a single year.

My cat does leave a strong smell. It has become my favorite smell.

Vaguely in order from worst to best, always referencing the most recent release:

• Baten Kaitis Origins Just worse in pretty much every way compared to the original.
• Super Mario RPG It does show it’s age and feels way too simplistic for my taste.
• Pokemon Legends Arceus I loved the first area. In fact I spent so much time there, every other area became boring since I was overleveled and already had most of the Pokemon. Needs some serious balancing.
• Baten Kaitos There is much to be loved as the game does so many things you normally don’t see. However, a good chunk of mechanics is best ignored as the game progresses and battles become monotonous.
• Star Ocean Second Story R Kinda a repeating thing this year, the first half was awesome, the second half not so much. Both story and many mechanics took a nosedive.
• Harvestella All around really solid but simplistic. The story goes hard after a certain point and at the end I felt like I finished multiple games.
• Xenoblade X I love everything Xenoblade, but this one has a few problems. E.g. Skells. They don’t scale with anything and are so much better than ground combat, they basically drain the RPG elements out of the game once you get them. Beat the entire second half without ever changing my Skell. Also, much more personal, I much prefer the headcanon I built for half a decadd over the new story elements added in the remaster.
• Metaphor A mixed bag. There is so much good compared to Persona 5, but having endless mana regen just completely kills any challange and led to way less thightly designed dungeons.
• Pokemon Conquest I just love SRPGs and having multiple layers and meta progression between dozens of different stories made it perfect to play every so often. Placement is heavily biased, playing a few campaigns with my partner is a tradition for the holiday season. A good chunk of maps is really annoying if you play the game for longer stretches.

But like, there is no reason you should have to travel further, just because your country is bigger.

In addition, as an EU resident you can travel across the EU like it’s one big country. The US is only about twice as large as the EU.