A little surprised to hear Zero Time Dilemma is seen as the weakest game of the trilogy. I played them all in a vacuum, never really engaging with the communities around the franchise, and I would never have said that myself.

If I had to pick, I’d argue that Virtue’s Last Reward was the “worst” one, but I am not happy about writing that. It was a great game that I enjoyed start to end, but ending on a “this will only make sense when the 3rd game releases in X years!” note leaves a really sour taste in my mouth. The other two games are complete experiences, and when I am playing a visual novel, the last thing I want is a cliffhanger “join us next time to find out!”

That said I think I enjoyed puzzles and philosophical musings of it the most out of the three? So my opinion is more about what was bad than what was good and should probably be discarded anyway.

I’ve gotta put this one out there because it will largely get overlooked every time the topic of “Visual Novel” gets brought up, but Digimon: Survive.

As a tactics RPG, it’s pretty mid. Character growth and customization exists, but isn’t quite as expansive as I’d like for that kind of game. It’s no Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, but comparing it to other tactics games doesn’t do it justice, because it’s one of the better-to-best written visual novels I have ever played.

Each of the endings explores the way small changes in circumstance can heavily impact people’s decisions, each of the characters and their partner monsters are oozing with personality, and some of the potential outcomes for each character represents some of the most wild, fucked up, and human emotional responses possible. Your decisions as the main character have minor impacts in the lines of which characters reach their end of their growth arcs, and which evolutions are available to your partner and some of your companions partners, and the collective value system limits which of the main branches you’re permitted to explore for your ending. Which it doesn’t boast the wide assortment of branching narrative paths that some visual novels take, it does still succeed in making your decisions feel like they matter.

And this is completely aside from the fact that it’s a Digimon game. A franchise widely viewed as “for children”, yet it engages with heavy existential themes and doesn’t shy from letting horrible things happen to good, and bad, people. People die, on screen, in ways I would not want small children to see. In a lot of ways, the game is a functional “reboot” of the franchise, sharing a lot of commonalities with Digimon Adventure, but using older characters, more serious mature themes, and never referencing the monsters as “digimon”. In fact, the term is only used once, during the epilogue of one of the endings, otherwise they’re referred to as Kemonogami, and treated like Yokai. They’re engrained in the history and legendsof the world, and it’s an amazing take on the franchise.

I’m gushing at this point, but what really matters is it’s an extremely well-written visual novel with competent enough Tactical RPG gameplay, and also currently on a rather deep Steam Sale. Cannot recommend it enough.

Screw 4k, but 120+ hz is amazing. I can barely stand playing things are 60fps anymore. I really notice it when game dips.

Well then, I guess I’m here to do crime.

Why the hate?

Gosh people… Shutdown your brain

You can’t seriously be shocked that people are downvoting you when your only defense is “stop using that silly little brain to think”.

Human life expectancy has doubled in those couple hundred years. Believing that something is good just because it is old is absurd.

Currently still using the G502 Hero, and all it’s customization is on-board, edited using a portable .exe. I’m using some Rosewill mechanical keyboard which I believe has all its customization tied to inputs while holding the FN key.

Fuck, I hate always-online apps just to use the God damn peripherials I’ve paid for. I go far out of my way to avoid them.

Canada posting higher on this report than the US, meanwhile the US constantly talks down on the quality of care in Canada, and conservatives use the Canada-US comparison to try and sell Canadians on privatized health care.

Don’t worry US, at this rate you won’t be in last place for much longer.

“The legislature acted promptly to change what was an old law to ensure access to I[VF] —,” he tries to say, only for Collins to interject and ask him, “Why did they have to act if it wasn’t in peril, senator?”

“Because of the Supreme Court decision,” Cotton responds, referring to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe.

Very “States rights to do what?” energy. Love to see it.

Listen, man, I can get stuff wrong sometimes. I’m still not convinced I am in this case, but, even if I am off on one very specific niche use of a word that rarely, if ever, comes up, attacking my entire livelihood over it, as though it defines every facet of teaching English, is an insane overstep.

I am not so arrogant as to assume words can only ever have one meaning, nor to attack a stranger on the internet over a disagreement on that meaning. I have also made no such logical fallacy. You asked if I was “sure”, and followed up with a suggestion that I had never spoken with a native English speaker. I said yes, I am confident, and then offered up my background as evidence that, at the very least, your assessment on my experiences is incorrect. I can see how you could conflate that as a call to authority, and perhaps should have phrased things in such a way that doesn’t leave room for such assumptions. That said, I’d advise against jumping down people’s throats based on assumptions, else you’ll end up doing things like building a strawman argument, while simultaneously accusing others of logical fallicies.

I’m done with this. The level of vitriol this discussion has been laced with is unwarrented and suggests that any further conversation is a waste of time. This entire disagreement should have been:

“Hey, I think X is right.”

“Well, this says Y is right, so you must be wrong.”

“I mean language is funky and weird, a lot of words mean different things in different spaces, so whatever.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Everything beyond that was grossly unnessecary, terminally online, internet arrogance that we’d both be better off without.

I’m not sure if you found my original statements challenging to follow, but nothing you’ve said contradicts what I’ve said. Parts of the definitions I’ve provided are strewn in the definitions you’ve provided, and differing definitions of specific word case isn’t unusual, even within similiar cultures. Language is fluid, and the same words can mean a lot of different things.

There is often a gap between common-use language, and the academic function of words (see “racism”). This is why I emphasized the relation of the definitions I provided to the fields of anthropology and sociology, as well as why I stated it is a use almost exclusively found, in my experiences, in academia.

I don’t appreciate the strange, ignorant, tongue-in-cheek jabs at my background. If you think I have something wrong I welcome you to say so, but the strange sense of superiority you’ve attached to your comments is unnessecarily insulting.

I am literally an English teacher, and have spent years editing university papers for English as an additional language learners. Yes, I am sure.

“People” is a generic term for more than one person.

“Persons” denotes a singular distinct grouping of people. Ie, Native American persons.

Not part of the question, but “peoples” is used for a plurality of distinct persons. Ie, “this had great impact on the various peoples of North America” would be a sentence to lead into a discussion on how an event had varying impacts on each unique cultural group in North America. This is largely only used in academics, specifically anthropology and sometimes sociology, but understand this use helps clear up the reason for the distinction between “people” and “persons”.

“THE WORLD IS LAUGHING AT US AS FOOLS…”

My favorite part is when he gets something so insanely wrong that it spins full circle and he gets it right anyway, just for completely the wrong reason.

The theory isn’t the statistic. The statistic is true. The theory is that there is a concentrated effort to replace white culture, values and people. In reality, white people have just been well off long enough that our culture has shifted away from having a ton of children.

Plus, the entire premise is predicated on the idea that having fewer white people, relative to other ethnic groups, is a bad thing. It’s not, but the people who give this theory the time of day are racist, so they see it as a problem. It is not.

While I understand and agree with your premise to a point, aren’t you advocating for the removal of all randomness in videogames? As long as random factors are tied to outcomes, games will always be playing off that desire that the Skinner Box highlights. I’d argue that the entire modern rogue-lite genre is predicated on the fact that sometimes you will get “better” powerups, upgrades, etc., which leads to better outcomes. Auto-chess games are similiar, where hitting good random rolls leads to high powered teams and easy wins.

Mastery of both these genres requires both a wide birth of knowledge, and flexibility as you make due with what you are offerred, rather than simply always having the best things at all times. These are skills that are fun to have tested and build master in, and I don’t really think we should eliminate that from games. I agree that the worst offenders are simply trying to feed off human addiction rather than build are emergant gameplay situations, but any rule that targets the addict chasers is likely to catch other games with randomization in the crossfire.

Alright, I’ll bite: what exactly is a “stonefruit” in this context? Google just says “fruits with large seeds that are basically rocks in the middle”, which I suspect is not the pseudo-intellectual flex your boss is going for?

It might be boring and obvious, but the speeds.

I used to have to plan ahead, set overnight downloads, very consciously and actively manage data rates and in general never plan around getting something. Today, I can get basically ANYTHING in less than an hour on FiOp. Most things, 5-10 minutes. Transfer rate has outscaled data size, and it’s fantastic.

Every single time I have played an Annapurna published game, I had a fantastic time. I won’t say that everything they did was equal, but everything they did was entertaining, and thought-provoking.

I can’t quite follow the legalese required to parse EXACTLY what this means going forward, but I am sure it is not good, and that is disappointing.

No, but telling someone they shouldn’t be allowed to vote is saying you believe they should be disenfranchised.

This is not a “both sides are the same” argument. Only that if you start to discuss who should and should not be allowed to vote, you are no longer creating a democracy. That is a dictatorship with extra steps.