I don’t dislike Tartarus so I didn’t mind that, but I’d argue that in some ways Reload is worse than FES and Portable. I personally like the indirect control of the original and the cutscenes are better in the original, as Reload adapts Portable. The gameplay balance is also almost non-existent due to the additional mechanics. Compared to Portable it obviously lacks the FeMC campaign.

This looks good, but I don’t really understand the point.
Like, we got P4G on all systems a few years ago, what’s wrong with that version that needs a remake? P3R already felt unnecessary, but at least there only Portable was accessible.

I’ve recently tried the game for a while and I have to disagree. From first impressions, the timers on crafting and limited inventory made playing ‘whenever’ feel bad (and unlocking the battle pass was even worse). Maybe that changes deeper into the game, but it made me quit.

I think it’s the Wii for me. I always felt like the controls were too limiting have games that played well. Sure there are some good games I played, like Mario Kart Wii and Mario Galaxy, but overall I remember being disappointed with both the game selection and how bad the controls were.

(dis)honorable mention: the Switch 2, because there’s nothing to play on it that I can’t play better on pc+deck.

Doesn’t look great…

From the trailer the gameplay seems fine, although I don’t get why they are remaking 64 again (again), and the graphics look decent, albeit generic. I kinda hate the character redesigns and voices. The “more cutscenes” doesn’t really feel like a selling point to me and I’m a bit worried about it.

I think the fighting game community tends to be one of the nicest (some game specific communities can be toxic tho). It’s usually very inclusive and generally friendly to newer players.

Arcaea is quite a good rhythm game that should run on lower end devices. There are song packs, but there’s enough songs in the free base version.

I don’t really know how to play or make music, but I’ve messed around with a few tools: there’s rackarrack which is a virtual fx rack for guitar, there’s DAW Ardour, if you are interested in synths and similar there are things like VCV rack and Cardinal, which are modular synth racks, there’s trackers like OpenMPT and Impulse Tracker and Hydrogen, which is a drum machine/sequencer.

If you are on Linux there’s jackd which is an audio system that allows you to route sound through applications with a virtual patchbay.

I just tried Torna and it looks great. Even just the removal (o reduction) of the sharpness filter makes the image so much better.

Excel does it for its formulas. It ends up being just a pain in the ass when you are looking online for info (which means it ends up increasing the barrier of entry, as most stuff online is in English).

I hadn’t considered unlocking difficulties as metaprogression, but yea in that case I think it’s a fair mechanic (to be clear, I tend to drop these games when I get to the inevitable difficulty spike at the final area/boss, so I haven’t really experienced it, as the only one I can clear is Rabbit and Steel which has a traditional easy/normal/hard/harder selection).

Unlocking content to ease players in I think is weird and counter productive, as often even failing gets you further in the process and you might not have learned what the game was trying to teach you by delaying something. You might then be in a slightly harder game without having progressed as a player.

What I really don’t like are the permanent leveling/modifiers you find in games like Hades. I feel like they go against the basic idea of a rougelike/lite, since you can/need (depending on the game) to grind.

I too was a bit disappointed when I first played it and reached ending A, thinking that was all there was. I continued months later to try the different mechanics and realised that they are not endings, but more or less just chapters/acts.

It’s honestly a really weird decision to present the game like this, especially since route A is the least interesting one (IMO).

FYI (with slight spoilers):

For me it’s any roguelike (or roguelite) I try. I may find the premise of the gameplay interesting, but having to replay the run from the start (while very likely not learning anything new, because I can’t repeat the situation that gave me trouble before) ruins it pretty quickly. Even the ones I kinda like (Rabbit And Steel and One Step From Eden) can’t keep my attention for long and I end up playing them very rarely.

Metaprogression in roguelites makes it even worse because I know that the runs are gonna be unfair from the start to make the upgrades work.

Looks like an interesting project, but I can’t understand what’s the advantage of using weird symbols.

I agree. I’m not someone who is interested in the singleplayer modes, so my opinion probably means nothing here, but since the gameplay is inherently dependent on a human opponent, I feel like they need to be more than just VS matches against the CPU, to either experiment with the gameplay or introduce you to the story and characters.

I mean… I’m not saying it’s good, but considering most games wouldn’t get free characters as updates (I think only MBTL did it, and it’s probably because most of the free characters are from Fate), I think it’s better to be able to optionally buy a set of characters if you want to play them, instead of having to buy a whole new version of the game to continue playing.

That’s not what I meant.

The article mentions paying for cosmetics instead of characters. With how f2p/live-service games are currently designed, I’d imagine that means things like battle passes (which are present already in some games like SF6 and GBFVS), rotating stores and/or lootboxes.

I honestly don’t see how single player “content” could be of any help. Sure, situational training like Strive and a few other games have (UNI I think had it?) would be nice to have, but I think the main obstacle for a lot of players is the (gameplay) interaction with another real person. I can’t say how other genres fix this (or if they even do), but my guess is that the mechanics themselves are less restrictive and a bit more forgiving.

Also, personally, I prefer buying characters for relatively cheap rather than having the usual f2p predatory crap. They should obviously be free for training tho.