FF6 is mine. That moment when they turn the corner and the world map music changes. Beyond cathartic. The 3-4 hour tension and release they set up in that part of the game is an incredible design triumph.

I did okay with the delays in FF7 but it was absolutely unbearable by FF9. On the plus side, that drove me to discover Suikoden merely because it had instant transitions.

Jeffrey Combs was also in DOTA: Dragon’s Blood, and that series’s cast was a fun synthesis of video game voice actor luminaries plus Star Trek alumni (Michael Dorn, John de Lancie, Anson Mount, Andrew Robinson and more).

But yeah, really that whole late 90’s/early 2000’s gaming era had some genuinely great performances from actors of different media. I still think about David Warner in Baldur’s Gate 2 from time to time.

And this is why I use the LTSC version and disable updates. Yes, my system isn’t as secure, but considering the usual attack vectors have moved more towards social engineering lately, being free of Microsoft’s nonsense outweighs the outdated security in my view.

I have a lot of these, but The Right Way Around, by Daughter, for Life is Strange: Before the Storm grabbed me the second I launched the game.

A more traditional main menu theme that I love is Ecce valde generous ale from Panzer Dragoon Saga. It’s a brilliant introduction to the game, drawing the player into a mysterious world in a post-apocalyptic setting.

I’ve got 1,000 hours in this one over the years and the PC port is the main reason I’m getting it (eventually). Hoping it’s not too locked-down for mods, FFT’s mod community has been a vibrant one.

Some of these scores haven’t been updated from early access yet, so this number’s probably going to go higher. Might be the top-rated game of the year. I’m sure it’s well-deserved, too. I played the crap out of the EA version when it first dropped.

What a year for smaller game projects.

Yeah, I suspect when it first appeared it was a short form of 尾羽. I’m not sure the exact kana limits they had, but I could see the extra two in おばね being too far.

クロトリ getting the literal “Blackbird” treatment is a good example of how impossible direct localization is. It’s why I appreciate–and support–injecting similar vibes elsewhere in scripts that may not have literal connections to the original Japanese. I think Woolsey got there in this particular case with Flea, Slash, and Ozzie. Not so much with the gurus.

I think, though, the answer to “why did we end up with this Woolsey-ism?” is no more complicated than him sitting bleary-eyed with a spreadsheet at 2am because of insanely short deadlines, and getting zero feedback. I’ve always figured that’s how we ended up with phoenix down.

Again, Sky 3rd is the third game in a continuous series. This is not Ys, which is an entirely different narrative format following a hero in stories specifically designed to be standalone. Ys isn’t even told in chronological order. Ys can absolutely be played in any order without losing anything (other than the second game, which is a direct sequel of the first).

You didn’t make it to the Cold Steel games, so you don’t know what I’m talking about here. Most of Sky 3rd’s throughlines continued in Cold Steel, not the Crossbell games (they even continue into the Daybreak arc). Falcom pivoted during Sky’s development; they initially weren’t going to do games in Crossbell.

Trails is Mass Effect writ large. It’s Game of Thrones. It’s Harry Potter. Yes, one can jump into those properties at any point, but they will be lost at some point–if not immediately–or otherwise missing context critical to their enjoyment of the property. That’s basic fictional media literacy. It’s just highly unusual in video games, so people assume it’s like other series. It’s not. It’s closer to long-running manga, television or novels.

There might be some fringe impacts Trails has had on the industry here and there, but the only big influence it has had is on Honkai: Star Rail’s combat system. And at this point, HSR is so much larger than the Trails series as a whole that it’s going to look like Meucci’s contribution to telephone technology when all is said and done. Expedition 33 already took some of its UI design from HSR.

Even the impact of Trails’s hybrid action/turn-based system is debatable because Trails through Daybreak was in development at the same time as Metaphor: ReFantazio, which uses the same system. Ultimately, the series serves a very specific, small niche within a niche, and it’s never going to be a major trailblazer for the same reason much of Baldur’s Gate 3’s story design won’t be: that kind of narrative structure is not an efficient way to make money. You have to be an auteur or a major risk taker to do software engineering that way.

Meanwhile, Final Fantasy VII’s impacts on the entire industry, let alone the genre, are too numerous to list. The two series are not remotely comparable. OP’s neck-deep in atomistic fallacy here.

Sky 3rd is simply the third game in this continuous series. It’s not a “die-hard fan” thing. It’s the third work, just as much the third season of a TV series or a third novel in a novel series is. Whether or not it’s a good work is a matter of taste. But whether it’s a necessary part of it is not up for debate.

It wraps up the first arc of a major throughline in the series and starts many more.

Not my experience at all, but I hang out in niche subreddits only.

I will say that I am noticing a trend where if I sort top posts by year, damn near everything is 10-12 months old. Between that and just a general lack of good info on recent topics, it’s clear a lot of the subject matter experts have moved on. To Discord, maybe.

1. The Expanse
2. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
3. Game of Thrones
4. Andor
5. Breaking Bad
6. Cowboy Bebop
7. Steins;Gate
8. Chernobyl
9. Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)
10. Mad Men

I’m beyond excited, this was the best early access experience I’ve ever had by a mile. It’s gotta be a GotY contender.

Hell of a year for indies/small publishers.

High enough regard to be very profitable, which makes the job cuts even more ridiculous.

Alicesoft is one of the major dev studios in this exact space, but their games range from having some non-con to outright featuring it. Not for everyone.

I started Crying Suns and have been very impressed with the art and the story, both the greater narrative and the script. Not sure about the combat just yet, maybe my tactics are just bad.

Overall though, I don’t know how how the hell this one passed me by. Commanding a spaceship and roguelite gameplay, it’s exactly the sort of thing I love.

Honkai: Star Rail. I love turn-based RPGs, and it continues to have the best turn-based combat I’ve ever played. The main story also has my favorite fiction trope (a shake-up of a pantheon) and it’s got amazing music, so it just hits a lot of really good spots for me.

Having played a chunk of the demo with Japanese audio, this hasn’t been a literal translation situation. It’s a standard JRPG localization, closer to NISA’s work with the series than XSEED’s that was on the loose side.

Yeah, was a solid move to echo the series opening with the in-game engine.

A roguelite structure seems like a natural fit for the premise, too.