I think it’s worth to have a look at either the Gothic or Risen games, both made by the same people. They are quite old and janky, but they check a lot of your boxes.

There’s also a remake comming up for Gothic 1.

Did a lot less than gaming than I originally planned. Still on Octopath Traveler II.

My B team, consisting of Castti, Agnea and Partitio feels a lot weaker than the other one, even accounting for the missing fourth character. I probably need to rethink their classes before finishing their final chapters. However, it’s hard to beat the automatic buff and debuff at night in combination with the automatic weakness revealed. I did finish up a lot of other things, like collecting all rusty weapons (all of which are equipped to Hikari for his solo run attempt) or the Commerce chapters from Partitio.

Started Danganronpa and also completed the first chapter with my partner. The first case was super obvious, but I really enjoyed the courtroom gameplay anyway. I expect the others to become increasingly more difficult. I hope nothing bad ever happens to Sakura.

Careful with the spoiler section, I don’t know if the game play out the same each time or if murders differ between playthroughs.

That’s right, I almost forgot about him! While I can remove Ochette now, I think the extra challange of using only 3 characters and then a single one is a welcome one.

More Octopath Traveler II.

I may just finish the game in the coming week. I wrapped up several stories this past week and can gladly report that the final bosses are a difficulty spike. At least the first one. I needed to devise an actual strategy and think about my builds for the first time. Looking forward to doing the same with my B team and probably for the secret boss as well.

You can, but only with really specific people. I think the person needs to be both physically able to do so and have enough knowledge to execute the task. For example, I don’t think you can make someone write a death message in a language the person doesn’t know.

So, you could say ‘eat a specific anmial and die’ and that would be a dice roll. ‘Eat a corona infected animal and die of the virus’ would be likely impossible, since your average person couldn’t tell which animal is infected.

However, just find a person working with deadly diseases in a lab setting and command them to infect themself before going outside. Let them go on a trip until they die and your chances are quite good, depending on the virus.

It’s been a while since I played the first one, it was my very first Switch game and OT II is probably one of my last ones before I get a Switch 2 (…assuming Monolith announces anything). Overall, I feel I enjoy them roughly the same. OT II improved on almost every front, except for the most glaring issues I had with the first one. I still think both are good games, though.

Continued with Octopath Traveler II.

By now my Ochette pretty much one shots most random encounters, her whole kit of monsters is just a collection of strong multi target attacks. Since these don’t even cost mana, there’s not much reason to switch it up. Once I’ve fully levelled her Merchant job, it will be her latent power AOE every fight instead.

Funnily enough, I’m not even that much overlevelled. I’ve done all stories up to Lv 30 (Well, almost - since the first character is fixed until their story is done, I’ve got 2 teams of 3 I rotate between. Hikari will be a solo run afterwards.) and I’m level 34 with Ochette. About 31 with the other three I took along.

Also watched my partner play a ton more Tomodatchi Life. One they had enough of it, we’ve also got Danganronpa THHAE from the recent sale lined up. I don’t know much about it, but seems like a big jump in terms of atmosphere coming from AI: Somnium Files.

I’ve played so much on lower end devices growing up, a stable 20 is fully playable. Even played some games dipping into single digits. 30 is buttery smooth. I can’t tell the difference above that.

Been working through Octopath Traveler II.

I’ve done all chapter 1 and most chapter 2 stories for all 8 characters. I’ve come to accept that any attempt to prevent overlevelling for the main story is fruitless as my Ochette just cuts through any boss. Instead I’ve done some optional high level stuff to get challanging boss fights, which were great.

Also watched my partner play a ridiculous amount of Tomodachi Life. It seems like a lot of fun, but the pool of random events seems quite small. Also, a few things from the original game were cut, like the option to create custom songs.

Started Octopath Traveler 2 this week.

Didn’t play too much, only did the introduction for 4 of the characters. Initially, I really struggled with myself on how to approach this game. Just go with one character for the challange, do everything for 4 characters and then do the other 4 or just everyone at once. In the end, I’ll probably juggle all 8, but it’s really annoying that I can’t remove my starting character (which is why I considered the solo run, you can remove them after their story is done).

No matter what I do, I’ll proabbly end up overleveled for a lot of stuff, which sucks.

Otherwise the game is great, but I still think the main gimmick - 8 more or less independant characters and stories - just doesn’t work all that great on a fundamental level. Maybe I’ll think otherwise after finishing it, supposedly it does it better than the first one.

I’m no expert, but I think Santa Claus isn’t exactly a biblical figure and neither is the Easter Bunny. These are normal holidays around here, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many children who know any of the christian stuff.

Also, I think Christmas was actually built on top of the prior winter solstice celebrations. It’s not like anyone knew the exact date of birth for a random guy from hundreds of years ago.

Played Persona 5 Tactica, which is fine.

The gameplay is similar to the the Mario and Rabbits games, although mostly focused on getting screen wide All-out Attacks - which target everthing within the triangle your three team members create on the map. Spam these and even on hard most maps are done in 1 or 2 rounds.

The story is quite wordy and feels like a slog in some early parts, but overall I really like both new characteres and their story. All in all, I much prefer this over P5 Strikers.

Next up is Octopath 2.

The existence of a queue sparks the follow-up question: What happens if something is born while the queue is empty?

Same. Haven’t seen anything about the movie yet and this post spoiled it.

Finished Persona 5 Tactica. Overall, I like the story and new characters, but the gameplay remained too easy. Until the final boss, which took well over an hour, I didn’t even bother healing once. Of course, it’s the best battle in the game.

I think it is better than Strikers, which I thought didn’t work at all.

On the final stretch of AI Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative, likely in the final psynch.

Almost all beans have been spilled, and the big revelation was explained. I still prefer the first games resolution, but this one is growing on me. It went from “That’s total bullshit” to “Wait a minute…” and finally “Shit, it’s actually somehow coming together”. To fully appreciate it, I think you’d have to play it twice.

Up next is likely Octopath 2, but maybe I’ll go for Nioh 2 or 13 Sentinels instead. Those 3 are my entire backlog atm.

I’m vegan. Even if you argue that plants can suffer - it’s the least amount of suffering I can cause without starving myself.

Also “applying ethics” does not mean it’s automatically unethical - just that I think about it beforehand instead of categorically thinking “it’s okay because I’m something better”.

That’s a dangerous line of reasoning. Depending on who you ask, people won’t consider a lot of things “equal or better”.

In no particulary order, a lot of people would not apply ethics to: Animals in general, pets, children, woman or all people of different ethnicitiy, religion or even political views.

I’d argue that ethics should be applied to all living things. Well, at least all things capable of suffering, but that keeps people arguing again - doctors even used to think that human babies aren’t fully capable of that.

Regarding the original question: The simulation isn’t alive. Stopping it won’t ‘kill’ it, assuming it can be resumed. Deleting it, however, argubly is be unethical, yet it does not cause suffering at the very least.

It’s still ongoing. Might as well ask how long the cross gen period between PS4 and PS6 will last at this point.

Going with your number of 16 weeks and the 10 years from the OG post, that’s equivalent to 160 weeks of life for a human with an life expectancy of a 100 years. Just about 3 years. Regardless of your death or how you spent these years, few people would call that a ‘happy life’.

RPG Maker MV is 80 bucks and that one is from 2015. DLC included you’re looking at ~130 bucks. I’d expect it to be quite a bit more expensive.