Started up Final Fantasy VI T-Edition this week, very early in. Mog absolutely wrecked face on the guard boss fight, that was funny. It’ll be fun to use chars in different ways, and I don’t even know what all is different yet.

The amount of “The [clearly disproportionate response] was completely justified here” I used to see in the comments on that genre is terrifying.

I think that’s just the hardcore raiding crowd everywhere. I’ve seen it across multiple MMOs. When you’re that highly invested in something, any changes are going to get under your skin. Especially so if competition for seats is involved.

What I wish was more universal was the dungeon etiquette. It’s been a few years since I was in World of Warcraft, but the pick-up group dungeon experience there had the most toxic people I’ve ever seen in gaming by a long way. And I’ve solo queued in League of Legends!

Based on years of experience moderating a public Discord server:

• Weirdest - Trails. Unfortunately, this is weird in the problematic way; think Pragmata. Some of the most well-known names in the fandom are that kind of weird. The series doesn’t do itself any favors leaning into it a bit, too. Adding to it is the perception that series fans are gatekeeping when they tell you to play the series in order when in reality, yes, the developers are insane enough to keep building a continuous narrative that’s gone 20 years, One Piece-style. Hard to convince people of that when video game series just don’t do that.

• Nicest - Stardew Valley. I agree with the others here on that.

• Meanest - Fire Emblem. I’ve seen some wars, holy hell. Aside from general fandom insularity from out-groups, there are intense, internecine wars going on within the fandom over the newer parasocial elements in the series. And then there are waifu wars on top of that within the part of the fandom that’s embraced the parasocial stuff. It’s a fandom crucible.

You’re welcome to join us over at Seventh Heaven. It’s a generalist JRPG server but we do have a small cadre of Trails fans.

That said, Trails was going to be my vote for weirdest, heh.

The Expanse is the only show I’ve never once skipped the opening credits on, even on rewatch. The song’s a pitch-perfect mood throughout the whole series, and a great length, too. Doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Nice! I hear some familiar soundfonts in there, I wonder if Japanese composers back then had a lot of the same ones.

87 on OpenCritic. If I’m being honest, that’s quite a bit higher than I was expecting after playing the demo. The gameplay felt novel for about three fights before it quickly started to feel like extruded third-person shooter product.

Unless I start hearing really strong things about the story, I’ll probably be waiting for a sale.

I have never understood this. Heard it with Undertale, too. One can always just ignore the weirdos in the fanbase?

I got absolutely sucked into Mewgenics the past month, still playing that. It doesn’t help that no other recent releases have caught my eye, and there aren’t really any on the horizon other than Mina the Hollower, which still doesn’t even have a release date.

Nice, best gaming news so far this year for me. I played the crap out of the original.

There’s a stock wind instrument recording that showed up in a bunch of places in 90’s media. It’s right at the start of “Distant Mountain” from Suikoden.

Woo, that song in the trailer is filthy, but I sure hope the text-to-speech is something you can turn off.

Bit of a tough sell to shareholders when Death Stranding sold well north of 10 million copies.

I heard the lead guy for HuniePop say the same not very long ago. He said the turnaround time for games made in regions with looser IP laws could be insane at times, and before you know it, your preview assets show up in some product.

Likely quite a bit of overlap with those people that are okay with genocide happening (trans or otherwise), but at the same time are zealots about animal cruelty.

Still works in Reddit Sync (with the Revanced hack).