Recent reviews are only at 66%. I’d be cautious for a while, as they just released 1.0 a while ago, and the game wasn’t on Early Access for a considerable time.

I like the idea, and the visuals, but old school jrpg turn-based battles are not for me anymore (honestly, I don’t think I ever liked them). I’d be all over this game if the combat was tactics instead.

I played the whole game a few days after the release. I like Johnny, and the other characters, but boy isn’t that game shallow. The only reason I finished the game is because I really enjoyed the dialogues and VA, and that it was a game that didn’t overstay its welcome. I think I finished the main story at max level and it took me less than 30h. But I couldn’t be bothered with most side quests or exploring the world, as it just fell hollow, a pretty shell.

My biggest gripes with the game:

• I felt that the starting portion of the game was majorly wasted. You pick a background, but it takes 1 hour to go over it and it doesn’t matter at all for the whole rest of the game, basically. Also, they want you to empathize with your pal at the beginning but you have 10 minutes to get to know him before being thrust into a suicide mission where he dies and you get stuck with a dead lunatic in your head.
• The skill system was as shallow and uninteresting and unimaginative as it could have been. A lot of perks were like “you get +1,6% to X”. It was so boring… I heard they improved this, I haven’t checked it yet, but my hopes are definitely not up.
• The only decision you have to make in the game that can actually change the ending is literally at the end of the game, and the game even tells you it’s time to make said decision, and it auto-saves for you. Talk about hand-holding and being afraid of letting the player make real choices. For a supposed RPG, that was a massive letdown.
• No single side-quest in the game (at least the more important/interesting ones) have more than binary conclusions. Either succeed or fail, that’s it. And they can’t even be done in different ways, you have only a single way to complete them.
• Modding yourself was also super shallow, and mostly unnecessary. You could just boost hacking and memory capacity and it was absolutely broken. The game itself was super easy and not at all challenging, again afraid of causing friction with the player.

I have the news in Brazilian-portuguese if you want.

Tl;Dr: repeat of what happened to Twitter basically, Moraes issued the takedown of a right wing/conservative brazilian influencer on Rumble on the basis of spreading misinformation and fake news (no surprise there), but Rumble has no legal representation in Brazil, which makes the company illegal to operate here. He ordered that they appoint someone as legal representation for the company in 48 hours, that was Thursday, feb 20, and they didn’t comply. Rumble was fined and Moraes ordered the platform to be thoroughly and completely blocked in Brazil until they pay their fines and appoint someone as legal representation.

Creature, just take the L and accept you’re being dense and pedantic. Yes, it’s news, obviously. Is it surprising news? Not that much if you have a brain, but not everyone is that savvy to be capable of correlating cause and future consequence. The fact that a laptop manufacturer has already stated they’re going to raise prices is news because: 1. It’s to tell the stupid people who thought (believed in Trump*) that the increase wouldn’t end up being paid by the consumers; and 2. Raises questions about how fast these companies are already planning to fuck the consumers over before the tariffs even hit. Both are perfectly newsworthy.

I’ve never played a single Yakuza/Like a Dragon game before, but I love the title of this one so much that I’m willing to give it a try.

There is a bunch of lore for the characters, and lore for world events. Some years ago they even made an entire animated series with 5 or 6 short videos explaining how the Rainbow 6 team changed directors. There are explanations for the game modes, and also for the enemy factions that show up in the pve modes. Back when I played, most players knew quite a bit about the lore and the characters.

Lore. Siege comes from a time where mobas, online shooters and other multiplayer games were big on building a “universe”. Every single one of the operators had full bios, and some also had videos about them. They also had videos explaining in-universe events, such as the alien virus that introduced the two agents from CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Threat Unit), Finka and Lion, and had an entire special pve game mode made for it, that eventually became its own spin-off game.

Essentially, just a giant W.

Nothing else is changing. No account required, no ads, no tracking, no strings attached. Your data remains fully in your control, stored locally in plain text Markdown files. All features are available to you for free without limits.

That certainly looks interesting.

Piracy is our friend. If Steam ever goes to shit, gamers would go back to piracy.

I’ve bought exactly three games on Epic over the years: The Old World, The Division 2, and Ghost Recon Breakpoint deluxe edition. Regional prices for EPIC are better than Steam’s, and sometimes they have promos while also giving away coupons. I bought Breakpoint for like 10% of its actual real price on Steam, and The Division was something like 70% off as well. If I’m not mistaken, The Old World was epic exclusive during early access, when I bought it. On the same time frame though… I probably bought 60+ games on Steam.

Maybe the layout or that little nipple that could work as a mouse.

There are ways to make inventory management fun, and there are ways to make inventory optimization that actually matters. But I guess you could call it a puzzle, a very light puzzle, in the same way you’d have to think how to pack stuff for staying two weeks in a single medium-sized luggage. And I don’t see how that detracts from the gameplay at all. Having to solve problems in a game is hugely interesting to me (and to many many people).

Usually the point of having limited storage is to convey the intention of the game designers that you shouldn’t be hoarding every item you come across. In the same way, if you have unlimited storage, it tells you that you should be picking up everything. Conceptually, I’m fine with both, but making the player make choices that matter is way more interesting to me, and makes for a better game most of the time. For example, Extraction games are a clear case of how inventory systems can actually become a core part of gameplay, and it’s obvious that those games would be less interesting if you just had infinite storage. ARPGs are also a big example of this, it’s made so that you have to pick and choose loot before coming back town, and the game wants you to come back town, it’s an important part of the gameplay loop. Outward has one of the coolest inventory systems I’ve ever seen, and it’s super simple, just by having your stuff inside an actual backpack on your back, that affects combat, and can even be damaged, and you have this nice assortment of different bags to choose from, with different looks and traits. CRPGs have limited/realistic inventory systems where you have to spread loot among your party members before having to go back to civilization. Survival/Survival Horror games are heavily dependent on the fact that the player has limited inventory to create scarcity and make the player make choices.

Again, casual inventory mechanics have their places, but saying it should be in every RPG/Game is just wrong. Can you imagine a dark/low fantasy RPG where you can just have unlimited health potions in your backpack? The premise is instantly ruined.

I don’t like it, it’s cheap and too casual. It’s fine in some games, but I prefer most of my RPGs with as much immersion as possible. If you’re going to do this, I expect you to have Magical Backpacks all around, and it would be even better if they behave like an actual item you can lose/get. I like how Chinese Xianxia solved this problem in high fantasy worlds: magic items with subspaces to store things are super common and even low tier bandits hiding in the mountains might have one or two lying around. Every system in an RPG should be designed and tailored to max the possible immersion you can get from the game. Don’t make something just because it’s convenient, make it something that adds to the experience and the lore of the game.

Siege, For Honor and The Division were the three best non-singleplayer games Ubisoft has ever made and will ever make, and they’re all underestimated and underutilized. It’s insane. The Division survival was an extraction shoot with top tier mechanics before anyone else had extraction shooters, I’ve been screaming at their subreddit for years for them to turn that into its own standalone game. For Honor is a crazy cool fighting game, with an incredible combat system that they simply never used in anything else again. And Siege has always been a deeper competitive shooter than any other. I’m somewhat excited to come back if X is a good turnaround for the game.

I hate to say it, but micro transactions are probably the only reason Siege is still alive and kicking. And even though it’s a paid game, I don’t mind their cosmetics micro transactions, they are quite literally the smallest of evils.

Well, this is truly surprising. Was also not expecting the 5th class to be Monk of all options.

“Land of the thief, home of the slave (…) where the dollar is sacred and power is god.” -Brother Ali