The real time compression is the playtime when you manually need to set junctions each time the party changes. Did most of the side content in 7, but skipped it in 8.

You can thank Japanese players for loudly complaining enough, because that caused Square to patch that before western release.

I still don't understand how anyone can play this and arrive at that Ultimecia theory.

If I have to give one positive, I like how all the party members get a proper love interest. (Except Quistis, but she kinda just sucks as a person so. Eh. Even Zell gets a minor NPC, which is funny.)

Stat system is almost interesting, way too tedious to engage with. Slightly made better in the later western releases. The combat system is extremely uninvolved and boring. There's very few dungeons/fight areas or reason to engage with anything. Weapon upgrades are trivial.

Gameplay is just bad.

Who needs listicles of the mundane parts of your year when a wrestler punched your phone during the main event?

lol, I googled スルメゲー in Images to see what'd pop up.

Drakengard 3. BoF Dragon's Quarter. MH Frontier, Slay the Spire, Romancing SaGa 2, Civilization, Death Stranding

Yeah, that tracks.

Media isn't one-size fits all. Some output isn't meant to be instantly gratifying. Making superficial evaluations without merit.

We need more スルメゲー. "Dried squid game"
Games that, the longer you chew on them, the more flavor they produce. Most of which aren't that great when you first boot them up.

We fucked up in the west by going along with game magazines ratings as the definitive scoring for the worth of videogames, I think. They'd rate based on broad mass appeal of a product, when value can be very different than that.

Scoring that also gives the notion of a "perfect" top rated game.

I think people deeply underestimate the power of AI generated story-time rabbit holes. You know how people get shocked at stuff like radicalized influencers with horrible rhetoric?

Imagine infinite "personal" stories of infinite people to validate your toxic viewpoints and pull you in deeper.

It's not tracking software. It's basic functionality built into Anki.

Coworker has been watching AI generated TikTok storytime videos about Karens being put in their place.

Remember Karens? They still exist in weirdo alt-right rabbit holes targeting miserable men afraid of women.

Yeah, I remember. 120% guarantee they wouldn't have loudly complained on social media if From were western-based developers.

But yeah, Elden and BotW are industry changing major releases and Horizon keeps trying to hang with those.

Choice really is between playing a major landmark year defining title or what's basically watered down 7th gen Ubislop repeats?

Remastered released alongside Dragon's Dogma 2. The series just keeps doing that.

You have better things to do to spend your time. Like watching paint dry, or sitting in silence.

It's just wild to me that they spent so much time overdesigning the raw visuals of a setting that then has... Very little in the way of incredible nature views?

It's like the opposite of Genshin looking like an untextured PS2 game but having breathtaking views.

Hey, Horizon kinda had a meme. Somewhat.

The protagonist literally looks like Liquid Snake in MGS5.

Instead I studied a lot. Started reading articles and books more in Japanese on the side. 40-50 new cards and 200-300 reviews a day usually.

This should be winding down next year, but then there's other study directions I want to head into.

I like how the one major Dutch company just makes the most soulless, derivative, if-it-didn't-exist-it'd-change-nothing empty output in the industry.

From Killzone to Horizon.

Just "What did the big US companies make a few years back? Yeah, let's do thattoo." with no own thoughts.