Media Videogame Thread

After a bit of a hiatus, I'm back to talk about another game. Took a bit of a break from gaming after not incredibly enjoying Twilight Princess and Metaphor, and it was a good break. If you're looking for a fun show to watch I'd highly recommend the original "Wonder Years." I have been slowly working my way through the Kingdom Hearts games again, preparing to play KH3 (I'm super late to the party I know lol)

Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance

Overall Ranking: B+

The Good:
Overall I really enjoyed this Kingdom Hearts game. I thought the choice of worlds were unique, fun choices. Most of the worlds in this game were brand new or expanded upon old worlds. My particular favorite was the Fantasia themed world. I never realized listening to orchestrated music while bashing monsters to death would be so fun lol I also enjoyed being able to play as Riku. The concept has been done before in Chain of Memories, but combat was restricted to a card based system. Here you get to play Riku in standard KH fashion which was really fun. As a TWEWY fan it was also fun to see the cast from that game appear in Traverse town. Not much else to say about the game outside of these things. It plays like your standard KH game for the most part.

The Bad: There isn't a lot of outright negatives here, just some nitpicks. The story is what you'd expect from a KH game. It's all over the place, the writing is corny as hell, and due to the narrative it's trying to tell, you'll be rehashing relationships with people for the billionth time. While some of these things can be taken as a bad quality, I will admit the convoluted plot and corny lines add to the charm of the game in an odd way. I didn't particularly enjoy the Dream Eater companions. Leveling them up to obtain new abilities really just consisted of buying a ton of the same training item, and repeatedly using them and backing out of the minigame.

Final Thoughts: All in all I enjoyed the game. Admittedly I couldn't recommend any KH game to anyone that didn't play them in their childhood. The writing is some of the worst in any game series and I'm not so sure that the combat mechanics make up for it despite how fun they can be. "Expedition 33" came out while I was playing this and I had to force myself to finish it before starting on that one....so I'm a little late to the party again lol but that is the game I'm currently playing and I'm looking forward to reviewing it. Thanks for reading as always, until next time!
 
Admittedly I couldn't recommend any KH game to anyone that didn't play them in their childhood. The writing is some of the worst in any game series and I'm not so sure that the combat mechanics make up for it despite how fun they can be.
This is slander against 358/2 Days, which is unironcially the best-written KH game and easily a top 10 DS RPG.

Also Kingdom Hearts II is probably one of the best action RPGs ever made and absolutely worth playing purely for the combat. Critical Mode is a super well-balanced hard mode and an awesome power trip once you learn it. Plus it's a Yoko Shimomura soundtrack. KHII has one of her best OSTs.
 
I am so enamored by Expedition 33. I am only like a quarter to a third through but I am already pretty confident in it being my GOTY

One of my favorite things about it is that it's an RPG with adults (except for Maelle) going on an adventure. The characters have history and depth to them that RPGs with teenaged characters just don't have. And whilst it's serious and dark, there's also whacky and fantastical stuff in there
 
I am so enamored by Expedition 33. I am only like a quarter to a third through but I am already pretty confident in it being my GOTY

One of my favorite things about it is that it's an RPG with adults (except for Maelle) going on an adventure. The characters have history and depth to them that RPGs with teenaged characters just don't have. And whilst it's serious and dark, there's also whacky and fantastical stuff in there
I’m so hyped to play it! So much is coming out but it’s definitely high up there for me, especially after reading comments like yours. Making my way through Oblivion Remastered right now. Have been loving Elden Ring Nightreign so far. And now Switch 2 comes out and Scarlet and Violet looks to be running nicely from what I saw. Eating good lately! Haha
 
Decided to replay The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap since the Game Grumps started an LP and it's my favorite 2D Zelda. I also (probably unwisely) decided to 100% it for the first time.

Minish Cap is probably up there when it comes to worst Zelda games to try to 100%, and that's because of one major issue: the figurine collecting sidequest.

Short version: you have to use a special currency called shells to buy figurines, but the figurine drops are randomized because it's basically done via a gachapin machine. You can spend more shells to increase the chance that you'll get a new figurine, and it is possible to make that chance 100%, but you have to spend more and more shells as your collection grows to the keep the chance at 100%. Shells are also not easy to grind, as they only randomly drop 1(?) at a time from grass or whatever and you can only buy 30 for a fairly expensive price at the shop. Otherwise you find them in guaranteed chests in dungeons and whatnot in admittedly large quantities (like 100 or 200), but these are limited and you can only hold 999 shells so you don't want to overcap and instead spend them immediately.

This is obviously a pain for original hardware, but since I'm playing on NSO, I can rewind/save state cheese the figurine machine to save shells. Spending only 1 shell for a 25% chance at a new figure instead of 76 for a 100% isn't a huge deal matter when I can just rewind and leave the room to reset the figurine drop when I get a dupe. And when I do run out, I can also cheat the Treasure Game with rewind to quickly max out my wallet and effectively have infinite money to buy all the shells I want, bypassing the RNG when o get lazy. Infinite money from Treasure Game cheese also helps with buying spare Kinstones for that sidequest and purchasing the fairly expensive quiver and bomb bag upgrades.

Trying to 100% on original hardware is absolutely not worth it since the shell + figurine grind is super agonizing on its own otherwise.
 
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The Nutdealer 3 Post

OK. I need to talk about this game or my head will explode.
Me if I don't make this post ->
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Here, I am vomiting out my thoughts. Unlike some of my other media posts, this is not a careful, meticulous read on something that's been stewing in my head for a while. These are immediate gut reactions.

I am not here for its gameplay. I do not care about its gameplay. (Unless it is somehow relevant to something else - story, themes, aesthetics, etc. - which does happen to some extent.) Because I do not care about its gameplay, I watched the game and did not play it. If you legally require thoughts from me, it looked like interesting ideas but potentially too easy / boring. Everything else going forward is not talking about the gameplay (for its own sake). There.

Summary
I will be real. I did not have a super positive opinion of this game. However, I understand and expect that many people will be overjoyed with this game and love it, and these people may not enjoy reading this less positive commentary. I completely get that and have no judgment your way. If this is you, go have fun. Seriously! You deserve it. For those of you still with us, welcome aboard.


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Relative to expectations, I think this game is comically bad. Wow. I went in with a mix of skepticism and optimism - I thought the first two chapters were fairly flawed as a standalone, but I went into Chapter 3 with some hope that the game would "grow the beard." As Chapter 3 progressed, it did some things I thought were cool, it did some things I thought weren't cool, so my opinions were bouncing around a lot. By the end, though, I realized that my hopes were unfounded. This feels like, the Archer or Supernatural era of Deltarune. I don't know if I'm more peeved or amused.

Positives
A lot relating to the visuals. A lot of the new characters have charming design, and Tenna's stylization is excellent. It makes fun scenes more fun and serious scenes more intimidating. Tenna's special text and presence on the interface is amazing. The green room is charming, the star rooms are funny, and the contrast between the colorful intensity of TV Land versus the barren monochrome snow outside is excellent.

The lead-up to the secret boss (the pixelated one who drops the cloak, not the Knight). The lead-in is very organic, and the imagery of a stationary looming Kris watching your pixel gameplay is great. The little English accent guy who watches the room where you play is quite interesting, I like him. The various games before the pixel boss fight are an interesting reimaginging of prior Genocide / Weird route total killings. These "real" pixel games also are a great foil to the game show equivalents, feeling more free and open because you went through a compromised, restricted version. Love that.

Game show is a very interesting premise that brings and keeps the main characters together in a novel way, and helps them do things besides tag along. I admire the chapter's commitment to the atmosphere - IT'S TV TIME! is a classic.

There's a lot of clever and smart character interaction in situations, reaction to situations, and writing thereof. Susie switching your controls around is exactly the sort of thing she'd do. The main 3 generally feel more realized than prior.

Negatives
Good lord. I keep getting distracted by the prior chapters and Undertale fangames, because they are more (positively) memorable and I'd sometimes rather think about them.

I cannot remember one music track.

While there's a lot of smart character writing, there's a lot of jarring, forced, and silly writing too. There's some "idiot plot" moments where Susie clearly hears Tenna actively scheming against the group but only reacts vaguely suspiciously. A lot of dialogue is like... I don't have the right words for this. I'll try and explain.

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It's not literally this meme - character's don't literally say things like "I feel angry." What I'm getting at is like, the clumsiness, the ham-handedness, characters saying obvious or unrealistically blunt things in a way that people don't talk. For example, near the end, Susie's writing very bluntly sets up Tenna for a motive rant, and I groaned. Susie's very serious backstory drop was so forced I actually physically started cringing. These examples near the end were easier for me to remember, but like it was a recurring on-and-off issue.

I'm going to create another character-writing-issues section for Tenna specifically. Good lord. Chaos King was unabashedly evil, Queen was more Chaotic Neutral, Tenna is... whatever the plot wants. I'm not saying "he changes as the plot goes on", that would obviously be fine. I mean the narrative randomly flashes between "he is abusive" and "you should sympathize with him." He pity-manipulates the party into playing with him, and openly schemes to take them down, and Susie will react like, "I'm mildly suspicious but dang your insecurities are valid bro, I'm with you." Then he'll treat his employees like props and trash and try to kill the party, but then the narrative expects you to feel super bad for him because h-h-he just wanted to be LOVED!!! :psysad: :psysad: :psysad:I of course understand that a character can have flaws, even serious ones, and still evoke symathy - I'm saying how this game executed it was jarring and unearned. I feel no sympathy for him and just want him to go away.

I'm making another separate section for Ralsei. I was very interested in his 'Am I important?' arc as it started up, and it had some good moments, but I started not caring so much. With the very clear and obvious Light World / Dark World crossing-over now, it feels kind of moot and irrelevant, like surely you can find some way to physically exist if the real-world shelter can magically fill with evil black smoke. I'm really not sure how much the game is committed to this arc, both from the mootness and because it gets somewhat scattershot attention in the chapter.
Maybe more fundamentally, the development of the arc felt off. Susie quickly says that, regardless of his physicality, he's real to her and Kris, and that's what counts. Near the end of the arc, though, we have a pretty similar repeat, where he worries about being real and Susie says something similar. I get that concerns can take more than one conversation to resolve, but I did not see the character progression.

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I'm making a third separate section for the Knight. OMG. What a shoddy 7 year reveal. I was already disconnected from the weak scene before her appearance, and after Suzie's bizarre spotlight (literally!) monologue, she just... appears from... you know off screen over there. As some Thing. That's the Knight I guess! And it's presumably Dess I guess! I alternated between involuntary cringing and laughing. It felt like watching a amateurish fanfic play out on the screen. Also she contributes nothing to the plot besides... yet another cliffhanger for the next chapter! Yay!!!!!! And also you can beat her with the secret boss's item but winning or losing has minimal immediate relevance either way. So the secret boss deal feels way less relevant itself. Yay!!!!

While I like the pixel game in context of the secret version, I do not like it in context of the game show. Like yes I understand that, he is a TV, game consoles are plugged into the TV, yes. But it's totally lacking in the flair and aplomb of Tenna's style. It's just so dry and odd. It subverts my expectations, but for what? What is this game format choice, versus anything else, trying to say or do versus any unexpected gameplay style? (I don't really care about his budget justifications, which I treat as a handwave versus like something meaningful in-universe.)
This question might be one of those I ponder a bit to see if I'm missing something. Like there's a reading here saying "Tenna is an old TV that is falling out of favor, the pixel game is an old style of game that is falling out of favor," but this seems like a fairly surface-level broadening of the message versus like delivering a powerful new insight. We'll see I guess.

Let's talk broader. Various parts of this chapter feels like a 'greatest hits mashup' of Deltarune / Undertale, and not in a good way. I'm not deriving a lot of new meaning out of its settings, themes, and characters. It introduces two major new characters, and I think they're both very badly written. Tenna is unsubtly similar to (and actively involved with) a past popular character in Spamton, and his writing trajectory is like Mettaton but less good. Speaking of Mettaton, we already did the Sudden Wacky TV Quiz + Fight + Cooking Challenge Gameshow!!! with another TV in Mettaton. The one thing I meaningfully noticed about the new score is that it had some remixes. Many of the funny bits are with old characters in Lancer and Rouxls, with Rouxls getting more novel development than most new characters. When I'm thinking "Wow it's so cool for the broader Undertale / Deltarune Deal that Ch3 introduced _____," I do not know how I'm filling that blank.

Going into Ch3, I felt like the first two chapters were isolated vignettes hinting at a shared connection, but not really having a lot to say about what that connection was. I was coming in with more questions than answers, and with a desire to have questions answered. Aside from the question of who the Knight is (I assume Dess? Which like, OK, that's fine), I feel like I have more new questions than answers. This series feels like one that is juggling a bunch of possibly interesting ideas for the sake of hooking you in, but disappointing you in the end, because it in the end doesn't seem to have much to Do or Say with these ideas. I feel like I'm being led on and am about ready to give up caring.

Super epic that the "LOVE WINS" progressive nonbinary lesbian game introduces polyamory exclusively as a funny joke that makes the prior partners uncomfortable and everyone knows is doomed to fail. Very cool.

Gacha machine skull emoji

Wellll that's a relief to have on a page somewhere. Maybe I'll revisit this, maybe I'll go through and see Chapter 4, fuck I'll probably look at least a little, but my chance of serious investment in this game is probably severed.
 
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I'm making a third separate section for the Knight. OMG. What a shoddy 7 year reveal. I was already disconnected from the weak scene before her appearance, and after Suzie's bizarre spotlight (literally!) monologue, she just... appears from... you know off screen over there. As some Thing. That's the Knight I guess! And it's presumably Dess I guess! I alternated between involuntary cringing and laughing. It felt like watching a amateurish fanfic play out on the screen. Also she contributes nothing to the plot besides... yet another cliffhanger for the next chapter! Yay!!!!!! And also you can beat her with the secret boss's item but winning or losing has minimal immediate relevance either way. So the secret boss deal feels way less relevant itself. Yay!!!!
first of all, its way more likely to be carol than dess
second of all
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the character design is actually very good. also like, you don't need a reward for it. its pretty cool that you won as the fights pretty fucking hard. cant there just be like a cool challenge? also also Kris kneeling fucking is very very relevant. also the entire game so far has been cliffhanger for the next chapter. also also also this is the least egregious cliffhanger cause you don't have to wait three years for it.
 
first of all, its way more likely to be carol than dess
second of all
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the character design is actually very good. also like, you don't need a reward for it. its pretty cool that you won as the fights pretty fucking hard. cant there just be like a cool challenge? also also Kris kneeling fucking is very very relevant. also the entire game so far has been cliffhanger for the next chapter. also also also this is the least egregious cliffhanger cause you don't have to wait three years for it.
Design stuff is off-base from my disagreement. I do think it's bad, but that's not among my 10 biggest problems with the game. My post snippet is about her reveal and relevance, and her design only tangentially matters there, having poor synergy in its goals (regardless of quality) with these more central reveal and relevance issues.

Also like, you clearly like her a lot, genuinely have fun, I'm not here to tell you to not have fun with stuff, but I'm unimpressed by "actually she's the coolest thing ever smh why are you being so unreasonable". I know the Springtrap fans, the Sonic fans, the M&L: BIS Dark Bowser fans, the Crash fans, the Waluigi fans, the Geno fans, the Haxorus fans, the Volcarona fans, the Bandana Dee fans, etc. think the same way about their guys, and I react to you in the same way I react to them.

cant there just be like a cool challenge?
No, because it is the culmination of an Alternate Route Type that begs comparison to other Alternate Route Type predecessors in DT2 Weird Route and UT Geno. After 7 years, and incorporating THE most anticipated character in those 7 years, I would have expected this Alternate Route Type to be at least as interesting as DT2 Weird Route. It wasn't.

also also Kris kneeling fucking is very very relevant. also the entire game so far has been cliffhanger for the next chapter. also also also this is the least egregious cliffhanger cause you don't have to wait three years for it
I made my attitude on cliffhanger stuff pretty clear. It's been Cliffhanger Central for 7 years, and I'm not here to continue the cycle of "wait wait after THIS new cliffhanger it will make sense and be really cool trust." When I whined about DT1-2 being non-cohesive, everyone told me "just wait for more content, trust me bro, it'll be so PEAK, it'll be masterpiece." I got more content, and instead of better, the cliffhanger issue is now worse. With the constant cliffhangers over so many years, I just don't really care about this world and characters anymore, and I feel like I'm being roped along into a nothingburger. That loss of author-player trust is making me less interested in continuing to even see if it is eventually, finally, worth it. You're obviously not in the same boat, but you can still at least understand where I'm coming form.

"It's not Toby's fault the games took that long." It doesn't matter whether it's his fault, certain media forms and release schedules are more or less suited to certain content types than others, and Cliffhanger Central is not a good design type for media with such extreme time gapping.

Sometimes a media seems good because the cliffhangers seem so enticing, but then it's just cliffhanger into cliffhanger, and at the end you're nowhere. Ask Sherlock fans. Or see hbomberguy's video on the show.

I've spent enough time with "game worthwhile because of the expected payoff" without actually having the payoff, I'd like game to just impress me on its own merits without relying on that possible future.
 
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adeleine i think a lot of your concerns and criticisms are reasonable even though i personally disagree with many of them, but it doesn't really feel you're arguing in good faith here? when you start your post off with stuff like

Unlike some of my other media posts, this is not a careful, meticulous read on something that's been stewing in my head for a while. These are immediate gut reactions.
I am not here for its gameplay. I do not care about its gameplay. (Unless it is somehow relevant to something else - story, themes, aesthetics, etc. - which does happen to some extent.) Because I do not care about its gameplay, I watched the game and did not play it.
Relative to expectations, I think this game is comically bad. Wow.

it makes me believe that you're not actually looking to talk about the game (which you admit to not playing btw) but rather looking for something to complain about. it's like if i watched a playthrough of a popular game i have no intention of playing anytime soon (say, the expedition 33 game everyone's talking about) and then decided to nitpick pretty much everything in the playthrough i was watching. sure, my nitpicks are probably valid complaints but like...why would i do that? it wouldn't be fun and i'd just look like an ass.

i'm not going to individually respond to every single complaint of yours because i don't wanna do a back-and-forth like that but a lot of it also seems like you got drawn up into the fandom hype which had huge expectations for every little thing due to these chapters taking like 5 years to come, but these expectations were unrealsitic. like the knight reveal, it's perfectly fine, especially in the context of gameplay when you're thrown into an unwinnable fight (and even when you win you lose, which shows off how strong the knight is and how much of a threat they are). i would very much recommend actually playing the game instead of watching someone play it, as games aren't just what you see on screen, but how you feel when you're playing them. since you haven't seen chapter 4 yet it would be the perfect opportunity to jump into that and actually play it, although if you're really not interested then it's not like i'm forcing you to play or anything. i just think your criticisms would hold more weight if you did play the game.

so this doesn't feel like i'm dunking on you here's some stuff i agree with you on. i agree that tenna's redemption is ass, he's funny enough but his "redemption" only works because the bad things he does are only slightly worse than queen and king. he's still a piece of shit but i don't get why we're supposed to feel bad for him (i mean i do get why, he felt abandoned, i just think it's stupid and that the bad things he's done aren't enough to ignore when taking into account his motivation. also queen shouldn't have been redeemed as well, she should be locked down there with king). cliffhangers suck too, i get why they're chapters but i'd rather just a whole game come out and play that instead of cliffhanger after cliffhanger, because eventually it goes from interesting suspense to just hoping they'll get it over with. and yeah the polyamory thing being played off as a joke instead of using it to develop the three of them was very annoying, especially considering how predictable the ending was going to be.
 
adeleine i think a lot of your concerns and criticisms are reasonable even though i personally disagree with many of them, but it doesn't really feel you're arguing in good faith here? when you start your post off with stuff like
It probably feels that way because I'm not really arguing. Well, at least in the original. I am listing a series of reactions I had to a thing. I'm explaining and justifying them to some extent, but I don't care that much about convincing people. I mostly wanted to get my personal thoughts out on a page to have them for reference, and to express my surprised reaction (this part helping explain why I put it here and not some private doc). As for bad faith, no. I went in with unsure expectations and an open mind, felt my opinion go up and down and up and down. and only really settled on a strongly negative reaction in the last 15 minutes. I went to the game to learn about it and to re-evaluate a prior opinion, and well, I did not get what I expected at all, I did re-evaluate my opinion, just not in an upward direction.

There might be a miscommunication with my discussion on "gameplay"? What I mean is like, I don't care about combat and puzzles, and stuff like that. When I react saying "Wow I think this sucks," my reaction does not encompass stuff like combat and puzzles.

-

it's like if i watched a playthrough of a popular game i have no intention of playing anytime soon (say, the expedition 33 game everyone's talking about) and then decided to nitpick pretty much everything in the playthrough i was watching. sure, my nitpicks are probably valid complaints but like...why would i do that? it wouldn't be fun and i'd just look like an ass.

There are two main reasons why I am involved.

1) Critical evaluation. I inherently like to do it. New Deltarune is an especially appealing target for a couple of reasons. Many people said / say / will say this game is extremely good, so it could show design excellence and creativity. I had a less positive reaction to the first two chapters (albeit much more positive than to Ch3), and this disagreement between people is interesting to dig into and try to understand.

2) Prior material. I really value Undertale, and, while far from fully positive about DT 1+2, there was a lot I liked about it. I never would have wrote a post about those like mine about three. It has music, characters, setpieces, and aesthetic choices that I genuinely evaluate highly and think fondly of. I both had genuine hope that my pre-existing interest would be rewarded with cool new things, and I had investment from my mild frustration in the change in direction from Undertale, so I wanted to see how valid my opinion still was.

"Why did I not play the game instead?"
When it comes to evaluating and experiencing games and their design, I am increasingly curious and increasingly busy. I do not have the time (or money, or willpower) to play everything that may interest me. I use watching as both a lower-investment experience of the game, and as a way to think about what games I may actually buy and experience more fully.

I consider it fair exchange to 1) keep an open, observant, careful, objective mind, and 2) not criticize the mechanical elements that I don't experience. I also acknowledge that gameplay can bleed into non-gameplay draws, and I look out for those relationships to think about possible biases in my approach. But the truth is, everybody has biases and misses certain types of things. People who play games often say wildly silly and incorrect claims about them, claims I often know are wrong (and why) even when I haven't played the thing! I have no problem taking 'limited angle of experience' as my particular bias in the sea of biases out there. If my particular bias causes me to be wrong on something, then I encourage someone without that particular bias to explain why I'm wrong, and I'm inclined to take their word for it! I'm appreciate that you didn't just dismiss my claims out of hand, even if you don't agree with all of them.

I'm definitely not going to play the game unless I decide to engage with Chapter 4 and have a radical change of opinion.

I think the fandom angle does a great job of demonstrating a limited angle of experience that isn't about playing the game or not, and how this angle could also lead people to incorrect conclusions. Do I agree with you that it led me to a wrong conclusion? In part. I do agree it influenced my experience, and I can't go back to seeing the Knight for the first time without that bias on my experience.

However, as I talked about in the original post and above response to CC, I don't think fandom is the full explanation for my disappointment. Fandom aside, they are/were among the most important and mysterious characters in the game, and as I discuss int he response to CC, I consider the time gap to be a legitimate design consideration. Fandom aside, there were reasons to have high expectations.

Like, I get your argument about the Knight's appearance serving roles. I get the value of a Hopeless Boss Fight. However, I still think the executional flaws of my original post apply, both to the reveal itself and the relative limitations of this chapter's Alternate Route.
 
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ima wait on getting a Nintendo Switch 2 cus money is tight but I know soon as see like a new pokemon or xenoblade game ima be so upset at myself for splurging but i wont be able to stop myself haha.
 
What they don’t tell you about the switch 2 is that the video game is secondary to how fun it is to load and unload the magnetic joycons from the controller holster. I am going to take years off the lifespan of these things repeatedly disengaging and reattaching the magnet to sate my thirsty monkey brain.
 
Digging Mario Kart World for the most part but the Free Roam mode needed more time to cook. The UX makes no sense (no comprehensive map or minimap, using fast travel requires you to literally quit out of the mode for some reason lmao) and trying to redo missions with the Retry button forces you to waste time by re-pressing the P-Switches that initiate them for no reason. I'm legitimately shocked this got past QA and wouldn't be surprised if the dev team outright refused to talk to anyone (i.e. Monolith Soft) who knew how to handle open world stuff. I have basically no drive to do anything in Free Roam because I can't figure out where I am or get around conveniently, especially because opening Free Roam literally dumps you somewhere random unless you realize you need to open the map and not click the "start Free Roam" button.

There are also other small annoyances like no jukebox/sound test to listen to the game's massive soundtrack (unless that's an unlockable) and the costumes bloating the character select screen because they're considered different characters technically. Oh also, no way to easily check which costumes have been unlocked unless you open the fucking map because that makes sense.
 
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Digging Mario Kart World for the most part but the Free Roam mode needed more time to cook. The UX makes no sense (no map or minimap, using fast travel requires you to literally quit out of the mode for some reason lmao) and trying to redo missions with the Retry button forces you to waste time by re-pressing the P-Switches that initiate them for no reason. I'm legitimately shocked this got past QA and wouldn't be surprised if the dev team outright refused to talk to anyone (i.e. Monolith Soft) who knew how to handle open world stuff. I have basically no drive to do anything in Free Roam because I can't figure out where I am or get around conveniently, especially because opening Free Roam literally dumps you somewhere random unless you realize you need to open the map and not click the "start Free Roam" button.

There are also other small annoyances like no jukebox/sound test to listen to the game's massive soundtrack (unless that's an unlockable) and the costumes bloating the character select screen because they're considered different characters technically. Oh also, no way to easily check which costumes have been unlocked unless you open the fucking map because that makes sense.
The P-Switch thing is pretty rough, and surprising since Nintendo is usually way better at polishing and avoiding those sorts of things.

Mario Kart World’s open world has one thing that most open worlds are missing: purpose. It is clear that this game became open world not to chase the trend but to service the core of Mario Kart’s gameplay, racing. It came about to allow for the Grand Prix / Knock Out Tour / Choose-your-own-path Vs. Mode stuff, rather than the other away around. As such the free roam was relegated to a side-mode, something to mess around within in between bouts of the main gameplay.

Nintendo’s error was miscalculating how much more interested inherently people would be in the free roam than in the racing. Which should’ve been obvious to them, really. The $80 price tag certainly didn’t help.

This game is just such an interesting case study because on a macro-scale it is an amazing achievement in world design and game feel, with some incredible updates to a gameplay core that has been basically the same for the past 20 years. But there are so many simple little quirks that seem like they would’ve been so obvious to anyone. Like the character select screen, as you mention.
 
Okay so a friend of mine informed me that you can pull up the map while in Free Roam by pressing Y. This does fix the fast travel and location problems, but the fact that the map isn't detailed still makes it hard to navigate on a micro scale. Plus the game doesn't do a good job even telling you that the Y button does this (it's not on the UI or mentioned in the controls when you check the pause menu).

The P-Switch thing is pretty rough, and surprising since Nintendo is usually way better at polishing and avoiding those sorts of things.

Mario Kart World’s open world has one thing that most open worlds are missing: purpose. It is clear that this game became open world not to chase the trend but to service the core of Mario Kart’s gameplay, racing. It came about to allow for the Grand Prix / Knock Out Tour / Choose-your-own-path Vs. Mode stuff, rather than the other away around. As such the free roam was relegated to a side-mode, something to mess around within in between bouts of the main gameplay.

Nintendo’s error was miscalculating how much more interested inherently people would be in the free roam than in the racing. Which should’ve been obvious to them, really. The $80 price tag certainly didn’t help.

This game is just such an interesting case study because on a macro-scale it is an amazing achievement in world design and game feel, with some incredible updates to a gameplay core that has been basically the same for the past 20 years. But there are so many simple little quirks that seem like they would’ve been so obvious to anyone. Like the character select screen, as you mention.
To be clear I don't have an issue with this aspect of the open world. It's a very neat side mode and I have discovered a lot of cool things while poking around. I just wish the game's UI/UX was better designed to help facilitate the exploration since there is stuff to do besides enjoying the landscapes.
 
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Finally finished Expedition 33 this weekend, and all I can say is WOW. I really wasn’t expecting to get into it that much - I love RPGS but something just wasn’t clicking the first hour or 2 for me. I think it was the technical issues (stuttering, frame rate drops, etc) that took me out of it initially. Once I got the hang of the battle system and started really pouring over the story though, I was HOOKED. The middle to end of Act 2 is probably one of the best sequences I’ve played in any game in a very long time, and ending of the story really left me wanting more in a very good way. My game of the year by a very large margin.

I’m planning on working through Metaphor as I fell off that last year randomly and probably Red Dead Redemption 2 as that’s another game I never finished. Right now though, I’m playing the Metal Gear Solid series for the first time as I’m extremely excited for Delta. As someone who got into Kojima’s games with Death Stranding, I’m really excited to see what kind of weirdness happens in MGS as its been relatively tame so far (I’m only 2 hours in)
 
I am so enamored by Expedition 33. I am only like a quarter to a third through but I am already pretty confident in it being my GOTY

One of my favorite things about it is that it's an RPG with adults (except for Maelle) going on an adventure. The characters have history and depth to them that RPGs with teenaged characters just don't have. And whilst it's serious and dark, there's also whacky and fantastical stuff in there
I’m so hyped to play it! So much is coming out but it’s definitely high up there for me, especially after reading comments like yours. Making my way through Oblivion Remastered right now. Have been loving Elden Ring Nightreign so far. And now Switch 2 comes out and Scarlet and Violet looks to be running nicely from what I saw. Eating good lately! Haha
Finally finished Expedition 33 this weekend, and all I can say is WOW. I really wasn’t expecting to get into it that much - I love RPGS but something just wasn’t clicking the first hour or 2 for me. I think it was the technical issues (stuttering, frame rate drops, etc) that took me out of it initially. Once I got the hang of the battle system and started really pouring over the story though, I was HOOKED. The middle to end of Act 2 is probably one of the best sequences I’ve played in any game in a very long time, and ending of the story really left me wanting more in a very good way. My game of the year by a very large margin.

I’m planning on working through Metaphor as I fell off that last year randomly and probably Red Dead Redemption 2 as that’s another game I never finished. Right now though, I’m playing the Metal Gear Solid series for the first time as I’m extremely excited for Delta. As someone who got into Kojima’s games with Death Stranding, I’m really excited to see what kind of weirdness happens in MGS as its been relatively tame so far (I’m only 2 hours in)
I have been playing Expedition 33 also and I stand by singing it's praises. The RPG genre really needed this, and original game that gives it a breath of life. The Soundtrack is absolutely amazing and I think it may win GOTY. Sandfalls first game was a grand slam, long live the French.

Edit Note: The game takes elements from classic RPGS like Chrono Trigger, Chrono Chross, Finally Fantasy VII, Finally Fantasy X, and Dragon Quest, blends them together in a very original RPG.
 
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*Sees last mega man x game release date* PLEASE CAPCOM, GIVE US MEGA MAN X9, WE CANT BE LEFT ON A 21 YEAR CLIFFHANGER
I have internally filed the cumulative Mega Man Zero quadrilogy among my favorite games ever, so I fully sympathize with you when I say that it's over, Mega Man is dead, Capcom doesn't give a fuck. There's an incoming new line of comics by Udon retelling each era of the franchise (Classic, X, Zero/ZX, etc.), that's the best we're getting.

"What about Rockman Taisen" Cancelled until proven otherwise
 
While it doesn't help resolve the plots (I think Legends might be waiting on a longer cliffhanger than X? I don't know I got into the franchise pretty late), there is at least a pretty big number of games with similar gameplay formulae. At the moment, I'd probably put 30XX as my favourite of them.
 
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