Unfortunately, there is no instance matching my interests. There are a number of communities across different instances, but it seems like several people tried to make their own, didn’t interact with each other and all of them are long dead.

Once I find such an instance, I’ll switch over. I’ve been meaning to leave .world anyways.

While I do agree with the problems identified, I can’t help but think they also made forums a lot better. Due to the lower discoverability and higher effort to actually join communities felt more personal. You interacted with smaller groups and came to know specific people. I still have friends from back then.

On larger platforms, I never had that. Even lemmy, which is small in comparison has enough people that I barely even think about specific users. Let alone speak with them on a personal level.

Because people liked the idea so much with FF7? /s

For the sake of adding something new, X is pareto optimal in terms of having both the best and the fewest games.

• Xenogears
• Xenosaga (maybe, haven’t played it yet)
• Xenoblade anything
• X-COM anything

I’d probably be content with only playing games from the Xeno- meta-series alone.

Anything Dragon Quest needs to be on the list!

Despite loving the genre overall, I bounced off KoA multiple times. Maybe it’s time to give it yet another go. I just wasn’t in the mood for MMORPGs - which the IP should have become iirc -, I guess.

I’ve come around to really liking them. In short, they vastly improve dungeons in my opinion.

Most RPGs don’t manage to create interesting battles outside of boss fights. Heck, an increasing amount of RPGs fails to create any kind of challange. However, random encounter can add another layer to dungeons: resource management. You have to plan out how to tackle fights in order to get through the dungeons with your limited items/MP - do you sacrifice more HP or do you go for your strongest attacks? How much exploration can you get in? Do you need to be extra careful and plan for stronger rare encounters? Maybe even plan around lvl up healing.

Sadly, this layer is easily removed. Overworld encounters? Just dodge everything. Adjustable encounters? Grind just enough, go heal and disable encounters. Non-challanging fights? Just use basic attacks. Healing stations? No need to plan anymore. Ideally, the dungeons provides no healing at all - especially not before encountering the boss.

If you’re interested in a game with great dungeons, I’d recommend every single Etrian Odyssey.

I’m still waiting for a reason to get a PS5 at all, everything I’ve been interested still got released on PS4 too - except for one single game.

I really don’t care for better specs anymore, I probably couldn’t even tell PS4 and PS5 games apart without a side-by-side comparison. Not to mention, to see a difference at all I’d need a new TV on top of the console. Not gonna happen anytime soon.

They very much are for a lot of people. Lines goes up, you can give yourself a nice bonus payout and if things come crashing down you leave. With your golden parachute of course.

All good things come in threes. /s

That was fast. We might as well start doing the lettuce thing for any given live service game at this point.

I wish they’d make an actual ‘adventure-card-game’ like Shadowverse was. Or, you know, just give me another Shadowverse game on switch.

Well, I’ve been missing out on the whole travelling thing.

I’ve been too poor to relate to that.

Unicorn Overlord, the tactical JRPG. I love how much depth there is to team building, there are so many classes, skills and synergies to plan with. After everything is maxed, you can build 10 squats of 6 units each.

However, about halfway through the game, I’m starting to feel burned out a bit. My squats are mostly done, further upgrades are rather expensive and there is little need to swap units if the old ones win every battle. Without the constant planning, the core gameplay gets a bit stale. But nothing a break won’t fix, I’d assume.

Contest #1: 2 Gold - 0 Silver - 1 Bronze

Contest #2: 1 Gold - 2 Silver - 0 Bronze

Having one gold more makes perfect sense if you look at multiple contests.

Generally speaking, you’re more likely to stay within a cult your were born in than joining one you weren’t. Having as many children as possible is cult founding 101.

The rapist can get a weapon too and being raped at gunpoint isn’t quite an improvement. You’ll likely get shot before you can draw a gun of your own.

I had a similar experience of first finishing the DLC and then going into God of War (2018). While not open world, it’s the same type of AAA soup you get from most big studios. There are so many baffling design decisions, I cannot fathom why people love the game so much - the constant barrage of stories and small talk is the most engaging thing in there.

The combat is utterly boring. Increasing the difficulty only results in spongy enemies. Their move sets are boring at best and annoying at worst. They are all but helpless if you just keep them at a distance and throw your axe.

Even worse, your godly powers are cutscene only. If you don’t want to make your game challanging, at least make a fun power fantasy and Kratos is perfect for that. He kills giant enemies, tears the very ground asunder and moves the heaviest objects imaginable. He even has super healing. None of which are tied to actual combat mechanics.

Upgrades are meaningless. Early on, you unlock a smith. I got my axe from 5 to 40 damage. Guess what? The very next enemy took the same amount of hits as the same type of enemy did before.

Traversing is mechanically boring. Climbing just means you gotta follow the yellow markings - press in the right direction or do the indicated button press. You literally cannot fall. Everything else is just walking from combat area to combat area.

The game throws an endless barrage of puzzles at you, none of which are engaging. They are so watered down, there’s barely much more thinking involved than in climbing.

Even worse, major upgrades are placed in “puzzle” chests. The puzzle? Well, just walk around and rotate your camera for several minutes until you’ve found all three runes.

The game basically just feels like a very long cutscene with a lot of padding so you can press some buttons. You can play it just fine, but they removed everything that could make any one system interesting in favor of having nothing in there a player could be stuck at. I like the characters, but I’m better served just watching a cutscene compilation for the second one.

“only 60” - the depressing state of politics. There’s a good amount of places where you’d retire before completing a single term at that age.