Getting it done with the power of friendship since 1991.
🔥💨💧💎 🌒🌕🌘 ✨
Some suggested Lemmy communities:
!patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
Discord for Japanese-style role-playing game (JRPG) discussion: https://discord.gg/vHXCjzf2ex
The chopsticks one was a game changer for me. Helps with mindful eating/portion control, too (until you get good enough with the chopsticks, anyway).
It never occurred to me that a con would have this, so I appreciate you mentioning it. I’m gonna keep an eye out for it at my local cons. I’ve played a ton of riichi mahjong digitally but very, very little with real tiles.
What I’ve seen when looking back is a lot of the retro games aren’t in English. It’s not a big deal once you’re familiar with the game, but I definitely don’t recommend that approach for beginners. Not retro (yet), Yakuza 0 was the game that got me started with riichi mahjong. It has the added benefit of being a way to make a little money for other stuff in the game.
The current game I play is Mahjong Soul. Super friendly to beginners. It has a cosmetics-only gacha, and sexy anime girls is very much the trend in gacha these days.
Whoa, not every day you see Ys II in the wild!
Yes, there are going to be opinion pieces like this one filling the space for a major news story like this one, but there’s still room for proper journalism right now. I recommend folks check out PC Gamer’s interview with an IP attorney that worked in Tokyo (which was also the second link in this posted article).
Software patents are a thorny topic, and it’s worthwhile for enthusiasts of the industry or those interested in IP law to read up on the concept in general. There’s risk for Nintendo here, and I found Sigmon’s offhand comment about how Nintendo’s ramped up legal hiring to be particularly interesting.
The most likely reason is, in short, forced arbitration was a way to prevent consumers from collectively taking legal action, and attorneys ended up doing that anyway in a way that’s even more costly to companies like Valve than class action lawsuits.
It’s also caused some ugly press recently, and the US has already passed legislation prohibiting it in certain agreements. I’m not expecting it to be in terms of service agreements much longer.
Definitely one of the most somber games I’ve ever played. Agreed on the music; I’m generally not big on Motoi Sakuraba, but I think this is one of his best soundtracks. The overworld is a vibe, and the theme is a big part of why.
The undub is worth looking into unless one’s really opposed to Japanese audio. Fifth-generation localized games were notorious for poor English voice direction and this game is no exception. Even the voice track quality isn’t as good as the original.
I kinda doubt proper antialiasing is going to be ready in time, so this might be the first time I really try Reshade for a game. Even at 200% a lot of it is still rough. There’s so much motion, even in quiet scenes.
Yeah, there’s a bizarre amount of particles in the world. I guess I’ll hear more about that later but combined with the usual busy Persona-style UI, I’m expecting to hear complaints, lol.
About 90 minutes in, I’m enjoying the gameplay so far (still super simple) and already 100% hooked by the story. English voice acting is also phenomenal. I think the people who haven’t been thrilled with Persona’s slow starts are going to like this.
I’m not sold on the visuals. The handcam-style screen drift in dialogue scenes is a bizarre choice, especially with this game being on consoles and more and more people playing on Steam Deck. The vast majority of players are going to have aliasing issues on their hardware, and that’s not going to be pretty with constant screen movement on a static scene with an anime style (and then it’s not in the animated scenes either). It just feels so weird to me in a game without a realistic style.
Steam reviews are also mixed right now complaining of frame drops, and I did get some bad performance in the very early outdoor area. Haven’t been to an area with that kind of draw distance since, and even in town I was able to maintain 60 FPS, so that’s a good sign if the expansive areas are few and far between in the game. A lot of little things are telling me it’s unlikely we’re going to see substantial performance improvements in the full game, and it’s going to have to overcome the Denuvo performance hit there, too.
Edit: finished the demo just now. I’m a little more used to the visual quirks (and I have a strong hunch that an interesting explanation is coming for one of them) and think this is going to be really good. I’m understanding now why Atlus is investing so much marketing into it.
More details on the Playstation blog.
Considering it’s Yoko, it’d worry me if it wasn’t random!
30 plus minute show.
Kidding aside, I agree, probably nothing earthshaking coming ahead of TGS.
Sid Meier and Firaxis in general are probably the only ones that have been consistently great for me over the years. I still think about Alpha Centauri a lot, and I’ve played so much Civ over the years. His studio’s XCOM games and Midnight Suns are all great, too.
Pretty much all the others I could name closed up shop or have declined in recent years.
I also kinda uh, forgot FF16 actually existed since I don’t do consoles and wasn’t even aware it had come out on PC until I read this article, heh.
This is what I keep coming back to with FF16. As the article hints at, you probably would have heard about it if word-of-mouth on the game was better. Instead, they make the controversial decision (even for a series as experimental as Final Fantasy) to go full action, Yoshida was perhaps a bit too honest with it in interviews, fanning the flames; and then stagger the releases. That’s a lot of hubris between changing the genre and betting on the PS5. Even if the game, major changes and all, was a bigger hit with the fandom, it sure feels like the ceiling was already set for this game by waiting a year on PC.
Now, given the lack of fanfare on the PC version’s sales, I’m left wondering just how bad they are overall. Is FF16 not even going to reach Persona 5’s numbers? That would mark a huge shift in the competitive landscape. If nothing else, FF16 ending up with a huge decline in mainline series sales could end up serving everyone by sending a message to the rest of the industry that exclusivity is too risky today.
Square Enix has had offerings in lower tiers. The Bravely series has been their AA-budget Final Fantasy, and the rest of the Asano division’s output (such as HD-2D) specializes in that range. They have also gone even lower recently with The Voice of Cards. SQEX’s new president recently laid out a new direction for the company, so it’s hard to say what their lineups will look like going forward, but for now, there’s a range for players to choose from.
Hrm, no mention of the super blurry character models that I had in the demo, so maybe they fixed that since and I missed it. Most of the footage looks pretty clean in this regard, too.
I had a pretty good experience with the demo with what DF would probably call low-to-midrange at this point (3060Ti, OC’d 10600k), and I’m the kinda person that’s sensitive to frame drops/stutter. I still think I’ll wait for a performance patch to be sure, though, if not a sale. Too many games for me to buy this season anyway.
It has to do with how the statute is written (I used to do comparative international IP policy research and analysis). Japanese works are given fairly wide latitude in creative sectors based on artistic intent. For example, you’ll see knockoff brands all the time in anime or manga, but the intent is clearly world building (or parody), not appropriation for promotional use. That artistic intent standard is used in the courts. This is why all the side-by-side comparisons people here probably saw on Twitter when Palworld came out was more of an ethnocentric American approach. Plus, copyright infringement is frequently incidental and not the result of large investment (unlike patents), so, in a country that prefers to handle domestic disputes informally, these incidents are less likely to go to court.
As a country that more recently entered the world stage based on manufacturing, patent protection is simply going to be taken more seriously as part of the culture. And yes–while I don’t have numbers–patent litigation does seem to get thrown out often when it comes to video games, at least the high-profile stuff, anyway. Here’s an example between Koei Tecmo and Capcom since I was already on Variety.
Similar visual design happens all the time in Japanese media and there’s rarely litigation over it. Patent lawsuits are much more common in Japan.
Looks nice! Kickstarter games have been a little mixed lately, so I wonder what the appetite will be for the fundraising.
LiS2 wasn’t my favorite. It started to feel like misery porn after a while, not to mention bordering on the absurd with the variety of situations they put the kids through. I think the story would have been stronger without the cult chapter. Expanding on the themes in the last chapter might have been a better choice and more consistent with the overall narrative. I will say, though, the endings are solid in the “choices matter” department. Best in the series with that, and a standout in gaming in that category.
I liked Before the Storm and True Colors, so I’m definitely looking forward to Deck Nine continuing the series with Double Exposure.