Without wishing to spoil, I was ready to have the game wrap up by chapter 9 or so, but then it kept going for a few more boss fights and classic Kojima plot twists, but I did find the overall story compelling. It’s just a bit jarring that it happens all in such a short amount of time at the end.

I think what I liked about the game is the fact that the game had enough faith in the player to merely give them an assortment of tools and a destination and then lets them figure out how to get from A to B. The mini-stories accompanying each destination also give weight to what you’re doing.

Honestly, not that bad of a setup! Guess I should be thankful that Dell still has all the drivers for a 2008 Dell Dimension still up on their web site. Now I just need a time-appropriate discrete GPU that doesn’t require 6-pin power and we should be good to go for some retro XP gaming.

39 whole minutes for this. And then the inevitable driver hell.

Shoutouts to @otakureborn.bsky.social @capncococharms.bsky.social and @wiituber.bsky.social ! You guys were great and I had a lot of fun testing and getting a feel for how things will go.

Thank you again @yukigoomba.bsky.social & @jatta.zone for helping set this whole project up! <3

Odd, I recently swapped a DVD drive from a non-functioning Xbox into one with a busted DVD drive, and they were obviously different model drives, but it booted up fine and played discs properly for me. Maybe if it were any arbitrary DVD drive as opposed to one from an Xbox it would have complained?

Funnily enough, this is the only mystery dungeon game I’ve played and completed.

This baffling decision is partly to blame for why RD reviewed and potentially sold so poorly. People were unwittingly playing it on Hard mode their first time by selecting Normal.

Also, if you plan on doing the save transfer, IIRC, the new “Easy” mode they added in PoR will not transfer properly.

Then you’ll be fine. Word of warning though. At least in NA, both PoR and RD didn’t label difficulties consistently.

In JP, they’re labeled Normal, Hard, and Maniac. In NA, PoR drops Maniac and replaces it with an Easy mode, while RD labels Normal as Easy, Hard as Normal, and Maniac as Hard.

If you’re starting out in the series, I think Path of Radiance on the Gamecube is a better starting point, and you get the added benefit of context when going into Radiant Dawn, which is a direct sequel. PoR even has a unique carryover feature into RD where a completed save in PoR can affect RD.

I still consider Radiant Dawn to be the series’ magnum opus for its sheer scale and scope of international conflict and its tackling of some relatively serious topics.

As for the character, Micaiah tops my list, unsurprisingly. The amount of shit she has to deal with in her game is unparalleled.

Like, do the Gestrals look like that because somebody on the dev team designed it that way or because an AI generated that and they just ran with it? Does the underwater dungeon exist because somebody had a vision for a dungeon like this or because AI hallucinated concept art with fish in the sky?

I’d make a point of the graphics, but with the AI wrinkle in everything, I can’t honestly give it anything more than “it looks fine.” I think the insidious thing about AI is that now I can’t trust that anything I’m seeing on screen is somebody’s vision for what this game should look like.