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Thank you all for the kind words! Truly appreciate it.

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@Ralizah Totally agree that all the controlled silliness is a lovely "surprise" for me in the last years going back to these older JRPGs. Like you said, it's really not something that I'm used to as someone who has mostly played games from the PS3 generation and on, and it's been a delight! One of the best examples that had me smiling throughout in this one was one short series of Private Actions. In one town, you can get a scene with one of the characters (Ilia) telling another (Millie) the story of Cinderella. The brutal version of it however, and Millie as well as your protagonist are totally grossed out by it. If you then later go back to a previous town, you can get a second Private Action contingent on that first one where your protagonist falls asleep and has a nightmare where he's the starring role in Cinderella. All the other characters in your party show up within the nightmare as the various characters with your protagonist going insane by the horror of it all. It was incredibly charming.

I'll admit that the Private Actions lean more towards the Heart-to-Hearts with them being short scenes of characterisation rather than extended series of one arc as with the Social Links. They're both easier and harder to trigger than the Heart-to-Hearts though, since you either have to visit all towns at all times to see if new ones pop up or follow a guide to see when new ones unlock and where to go for them. I did the latter as to not drive myself crazy, and that might ruin your experience if you were not a fan of how the Affinity system in Xenoblade locked them behind specific conditions too. As hinted at, they also don't have the quality of life that game's definitive edition brought where the game actively lets you know where to go for them and when, which is a shame. I assume plenty of people would either just miss them or not bother because of it. I believe in the second game's remake they do implement that feature, so I'm looking forward to interacting with the system in a less frustrating way!

You're right that there's still a lot of science-fantasy mix today. I suppose I just find it a shame there's nothing that's purely sci-fi, and that even in the ones who blend the genres, they usually lean more towards the fantasy tropes. I love fantasy all the same, but I'm ultimately a sci-fi kinda gal. I've never really looked into the Phantasy Star series, but it sounds like it might be up my alley! Doing so now gives me a whole range of confusingly titled games... but I guess that's par of the course for many a JRPG series. I'll just have to look into them more deeply for where is a good place to start that I might still be able to stomach graphically/mechanically. Definitely excited for Star Ocean: The Second Story R. I'm keeping a close eye for whenever it next gets a good sale.

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@Th3solution Yeah, there was some assuming on my part with the whole manual tangent, as I wasn't actually around for that era of gaming myself. I would've expected them to be more useful than how you experienced them at least! This remake might not have had that breadth of physical documentation, but I imagine the original release might have with it being a 90s game. I was largely just very surprised by how confusing and little the online documentation by fans was for this remake. I know Star Ocean isn't a Final Fantasy or a Persona level franchise, but I thought it was still in the upper echelon in terms of its fanbase. To then run into issues with finding accurate guides was somewhat confusing to me. I feel like I've had easier times finding reliable help for much smaller games!

You bring up a good point with how loading screens also used to double as tutorialisation to some degree. I'll be the first to admit I mostly ignored those hints, but even if I wasn't actively scrolling through them, I'm sure they helped me pick up mechanics here and there by simple suggestion. I guess the way Resident Evil does it (as you mentioned) where you have to actively interact to go into the gameplay from the loading screen is a solid in-between, but there must still be better ways to replace that vital part of the learning process. It's a tough balancing act, as I think constant pop-ups or bloated HUDs are hardly improving the experience either. Even if a lot more discussion is being had around games online nowadays and answers are easier to find than ever, we shouldn't have to rely on anything outside of the game to teach us the ropes.

It wasn't something I had considered while writing, but you're totally right in that replayability was a big part of that design philosophy. I wonder how much people even realised at the time that there were so many different options with worthwhile differences though, since the game itself doesn't once hint at the fact you might be missing any companions. Maybe that was something that was in the guidebook to make sure people knew to replay it! I think that's where the differnce in missable content lies when you compare the presence of it in modern vs. retro gaming. Like you said, whether it's a bunch of missing trophies, endless horde of busywork markers or actual dialogue in the game telling you "you can't do this"... they just have to let you know that there's content you're missing. I can't speak for all retro gaming of course, but I imagine much of it was more of the school of design that Star Ocean followed where you had none of that and it was just a simple act of discovery if you loved the game enough to engage with it for multiple playthroughs.

I totally get your attachment to current gaming's tutorialisation too. It's probably the only reason why I experienced this as as much of a negative as I did. If I was used to the former train of thought where you didn't expect it from a game to begin with, it'd be a game like any other on that front. I'm not even sure why I pushed through it in this particular scenario as someone who regularly vents to their friends about how the need for outside wikis in games like Terraria or Minecraft is actually ridiculous. Here I am enjoying a game that put me through the exact same trouble (even if to a lesser degree)! I suppose the game got me engaged enough before throwing me into the deep end that I just learned to look past that frustration and engage with it on its own terms. Souls-likes aren't a genre I've given my time to so far (mostly because I am terrified of high difficulty), but I wonder how its readily available documentation might shape my opinions vs. this one where it was a struggle to even learn about the systems outside of it.

I won't continue straight away, but I can't imagine it's too long before I dip my toes into the franchise again. I mostly avoid going back-to-back, even on games I truly love, simply because I'm scared of the possible burn-out. I'm assuming that if I want another truly retro fix at some point, the Pixel remasters for the Final Fantasy series would be a great place to look! Even if the shorter length of this one is what appealed to me in terms of playing it when I did... which I don't think is something I can expect from that series. I doubt it'll be long before you hear me knocking at your door with some Final Fantasy commentary no matter what, retro or otherwise.

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@Pizzamorg Again, that's really kind of you. Thank you! And hey, I know you have just as many interesting observations to make about the games you're passionate about (judging by your previous posts!)

[Edited Wed 4th Mar 2026 by Tjuz]

I tried Eternal Life of Goldman demo on PC and it looks incredible! If the price is not too steep, I'll there Day 1. This will be the talk of the town when it's released.

[Edited Wed 11th Mar 2026 by Scottyy]

Rolled credits on Monster Hunter Stories 3 today.

I just kinda... wish I had more to say? But I just sorta… don’t.

In 2021, Stories 2 absolutely took over my whole world, man. I played over 100 hours of that on PC. I started another playthrough on Switch. I just don't usually do that with single player games, but that game it just sunk it's teeth into me so deep.

It took the core Monster Hunter formula I love, and translated it faithfully into other things I love, turn based party RPGs and monster catchers. Like it was basically my dream game, and by and large delivered in every way I could have ever hoped for.

Monster Hunter Stories 3 then, is in my mind, about as close to an objectively better game as a sequel can be. It took all of the best parts of the previous games, and refined them and polished them into basically their ultimate forms. It is hard to imagine how I could have loved 2 so much now I have beaten 3, thinking back to all of 2’s brutal difficulty spikes, and just how much friction was baked into so many systems there. 3 really feels like it went after every pain point in 2, maybe some you didn't even realise were pain points at the time, and fixes them.

There is just so much QOL and improvement of things everywhere, it cannot be understated. But I also wonder if maybe that is also sorta the problem with this one? Maybe it is too focused on the "mistakes" of the past, and isn't looking forward enough?

It is technically a true sequel, new setting, characters, story, mechanics etc but when I think about it, it is probably closer to those like JRPG re-releases or something, where they just release the same game again, but restore a bunch of cut content and refine the game feel and visuals and sell you it again at full price. Like it is reductive I suppose in a way to call it that, cause 3 is more than that, but honestly maybe it isn't enough more than that. Maybe it is too close to a Monster Hunter Stories 2 Royal than it is a Monster Hunter Stories 3. Maybe being in a no man's land between the 2 is a problem regardless of how close it leans to either or.

Maybe the problem is 2 already delivered me almost anything I could ever want from this concept, so that if you are going to just offer me more, and not something truly different, then actually I am already still full from my Stories 2 feast. And I get that sounds kinda strange, especially as trying new things can have disastrous results, but I am just trying to find any reason in my brain why I just never loved this.

Maybe it is just because you can beat it in around 40 hours, and there is zero content after the credit rolls (although you can go back to grind the game out and take on side content that sorta feels like it is designed to be played after you face the final campaign boss, but isn’t organised in that way), so it just doesn't have enough runway to take over your life like 2 did.

All I know, is there is just something missing here for me, and I don’t know what it is. I should love this game, it should take over my whole world like 2 did. But instead the credits rolled and I’m just sorta done.

It is an objectively great game that I think is still somehow just sorta okay.

[Edited Thu 19th Mar 2026 by Pizzamorg]

@Werehog Appreciate it! I did try and keep it spoiler free in the details, but I know even referencing towards things can count as spoilers and I wouldn't want to rob anyone from something in their first playthrough of a LIS experience.

I guess like with everything LIS, it all just makes me talk out of both sides of my mouth. A part of me is like well in order to have enough time to get to the big hook at the end of DE episode 1, and then shift into a story about different timelines, starting DE basically in season 4 of a show we'd only seen season 1 of, was a necessary evil.

But then True Colors afforded us a more organic series of relationships and sense of place by having us arrive with Alex, but that didn't stop them from having a big hook at the end of their first episode either.

But TC also had plenty of its own pacing issues so neither is perfect really.

Choice in LIS is interesting in general I think, especially when you move away from the first game, which was largely a series of binary trolley problems. Deck Nine's approach is often focused more on smaller choices that change the texture of the fabric, rather than necessarily hurling us down whole new paths.

As the games often muse, observation alters a subject inherently, you can never quite replicate the authentic choices you make the first time through a LIS game, because the second time you play, you already know the outcomes of your original choices, and are naturally inclined to go back and correct some things, even unconsciously. This serves as a fun meta wrap around to the core conflict with Max's powers, and how it becomes almost an unconscious obligation for her also to keep rewinding until she gets things perfect.

One of DEs most interesting beats for me, was about Max making the choice to stop using this power and live with the choices she makes, after she lived for years with the trauma of your shared choice at the end of the first game. Because exactly that, Max didn't just make that choice. We did. It is a shame more isn't done with this and in fact it is basically abandoned in Reunion.

[Edited Wed 8th Apr 2026 by Pizzamorg]

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You fellow PushSquarians might have noticed a certain MMORPG, Wizard101, came to consoles last year. You likewise might have scoffed at it and wondered who in their right mind would play it. I, the almighty Tjuz whose gaming taste is unquestionable and is arguably the most beloved community member, did the same thing upon seeing it. A silly little wizard MMO clearly aimed at children? Ha! Don't make me laugh. When my roommate then reminisced a few days ago about playing it as a kid, I laughed again. No wonder you enjoyed it. Your bar for quality gaming as a kid must have been incredibly low. When he then asked me to play it with him for nostalgia's sake, I equally laughed it off. Me? Am I twelve years old? After some unrelenting pressure, I gave in. Fine. I'll give it a few hours and uninstall it directly after as expected of a well-adjusted adult. I didn't.

I was never a fan of the MMORPG genre. I tried World of Warcraft and it didn't take. I tried Final Fantasy XIV and quickly left bored. Hell, I even tried Runescape as a kid, and that left barely an impression for me to now think back on. I've always found the genre's staple combat and quest design to be exhausting and uninspired more than anything else. Never saw a story worth experiencing or one that grabbed me within a few hours at the very least. This was not a genre I ever expected to engage with further as I had made up my mind. So, tell me, why am I now 25 hours into this silly little wizard MMO? Why did I find myself online yesterday evening after my roommate had logged out for the day making sure my garden was in tip-top shape, my daily enemy was slaughtered and my excess inventory was sold off for a good price?

I have three theories as to how this might have happened. One: my judgy nature has lessened to the point I let myself simply enjoy things. Ha, that's an unlikely one. Two: the combat. Wizard101 employs card-based combat as opposed to most of its competitors. As per usual, you go in rounds between yourself and the enemies and select the card you drew from your deck that you wish to play. Watch a long, and frankly, impressive for its time animation play out. Rinse and repeat until either you or the enemy dies of the pain inflicted. I knew I was a fan of card-based combat after having engaged with Midnight Suns for example, but I would've never expected it could make such a difference in my enjoyment of an MMO by integrating this. I'm actually... having fun in MMO combat? Sure, it's bound to get repetitive eventually with all the quests that still require you to kill multiple enemies over and over, but it's been standing the test of playtime so far. With leveling and receiving new cards also taking more time than your usual card-based battler, I've also found myself far more invested in setting up my deck and far more appreciative when I get a new card to switch it all up.

The third reason: maybe I've softened up in regards to my criticism of usual MMO design? Some of you will know I spoke incredibly highly of Xenoblade Chronicles when I played through it last year. Despite criticising MMOs for the way they're designed, that game shares a lot of their philosophy up to the way its combat system is handled. I found side quests there an absolute delight, partially due to the Affinity System, but in spite of it representing everything I had come to dislike about the quests in MMOs. I'm not sure how much this could play into it, but I have to imagine it might have more than a small part in adjusting my way of thinking and letting myself have fun even in uninspired fetch quests. Maybe my enjoyment of that game in particular should've been noticed as a switch within myself of what I am and am not able to enjoy. As much as I had strong opinions on exactly those kinds of choices before, they certainly didn't align with my thinking on Xenoblade and now... Wizard101.

I will say that even beyond all of that, I gave it a lot less credit when just previewing its images than was due. Sure, this game was obviously the result of the following (admittedly cynical) pitch meeting at KingsIsle Entertainment:

"We want to make an MMO! They're all the rage right now. Which of my employees has an idea?" asks the CEO, Money McGrub. "Uh, I don't know, sir. I think the target audience is mostly adults and it might serve us to appeal to the young kids," a random employee who was laid off two years later answers. McGrub's eyes fill with dollar signs. "Ah, yes, a genius idea! Now, you! You, the one who just got a kid. What are they into nowadays?" he asks the aforementioned father whose kid, in reality, is already eight years old. "Yes, good to know you acknowledge my kid's existence now despite denying my paternity leave at the time. Let's see. You know what they love? Harry Potter." he answers. McGrub jumps up, oddly resembling the visualised jump of stock prices in his movement. "We shall make an MMO aimed at children that takes the conceit of Harry Potter where our players assume the role of a student wizard. Thank you all for your input!" he says as he leaves the room already tearing up at the thought of his future golden parachute.

And yet, what they've created feels rather charming. Whether it's my nostalgia for the exact world they used as a jumping off point or really just their own writing, does it really matter when I'm genuinely having fun? Who knows how long it'll last. I end up getting burned out on just about every RPG I play eventually, and MMORPGs might be no different on that front. Hell, it's probably a likely end result more than anything. For as long as I'm having fun however though, I'll finally give it the credit it deserves as a solid MMORPG I've come to actually enjoy. That puts it ahead of many in my books already!

Enough of this post. Time to check whether my Boom Shroom has gotten just another pest I need to exterminate, as I've been dreading and daydreaming about all day at the office. Someone needs to take care of this plant if it can't take care of itself...

[Edited Thu 28th May 2026 by Tjuz]

Tjuz wrote:

I, the almighty Tjuz who [...] is arguably the most beloved community member...

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After years of starting, stopping, bouncing, restarting for all sorts of various reasons, I finally finished Xenoblade 1 DE (Switch 2 edition).

It sounds hyperbolic, but it's like kind of life changing?

A monument to the unlimited power of human creativity.

A journey I'm going to keep with me forever.

A reminder in these current times as Gen AI encroaches on all sides, threatening to smother all human creativity, as homogeneity, complacency and greed rips through the videogame medium like a cancer, that in the face of all of that, what humanity can achieve is limitless. Which is kinda funny in a way, given that the story is about a narcissistic creator God and those who rebel against them, to create a new future that each individual can shape on their own. A story of the power of human creativity, crafted and presented with some of the greatest feats humanity has ever created within this space.

Despite the frame rate chugs in the Switch 2 version, and the weird presentation where the Switch 2 version upgrades some textures - but not all of them, so the much older game underneath keeps poking through - so often as I played this I just stopped, looked around and would say to my empty apartment, “My God, humans MADE this?! Like how did they make this?!”.

I feel plenty of games have attempted scale, but it is often just a lot of empty fields, skybox trickery and not a lot else. And while this is absolutely that, the choice to be set in a series of open zones in a lot of ways lets them have their cake and eat it, as while you look off into the horizon and see something mind blowing, you're probably going to eventually be able to go there. Maybe not in some unbroken, seamless, way - the version you're seeing in the sky isn't the real level, of course - but there is a real level for that coming, and it will defy any expectations you have for it. I feel like many games want to tell you you're on a grand adventure, but very few actually feel like you're on a grand adventure, in the way this does.

And yes, the game is not flawless by any stretch of the imagination. Much of its quest design is basic MMO stuff, which often oscillates on two ends of the spectrum. A lot of the quests will just be kill five X and add little to your experience, while other quests will have you returning to areas you only make a flying visit to in the main story, fleshing out, and adding a lot of life and texture to that space you wouldn't have found if you hadn't done those side quests. And on the one hand I kinda love that, as it rewards the committed and doesn't bog down the main story, but the game also doesn't make it very clear when your "pick up five tomatoes out of the mud" might branch into the pillar questline to give a space its entire context and reason for being, which means a lot of those wonderful worldbuilding can be just completely missed.

For a game built around complex character kits, where two are piloted by the AI at all times, it is kind of astounding just how truly awful the companion AI is. I found I often had to limit the number of skills they have equipped just to make sure they actually use the right ones in the right spots, which feels like this shouldn’t have to be the case.

It is a shame too, as I actually think the core combat is actually pretty fun, the sort of single player MMO combat really not done by anything else. When you hit that flow state and you and your AI companions are moving as one, not just dumping cooldowns by working as effectively one long combo chain, it is rewarding like almost nothing else. Sadly, those moments are often far too rare, and you do instead spend far too much time babysitting companions and hoping they don't cause a game over through their ineptitude and lack of self preservation.

This is made worse by the absurd way the game handles level scaling and difficulty tuning. I had to look up why I felt like I was falling so far behind on levels in the back half of the game, only to learn how broken the underlying math is. The game doesn't scale XP to match the late-game story spikes; instead, it aggressively guts your XP gains if you fight anything even slightly below your level.

While that might all sound logical, Xenoblade is not a linear experience. Characters exist on their own life paths, there are also dedicated times of day, there are quests, hidden behind other quests (and sometimes quests, hidden behind other quests, which are given to you at say level 30, but take you into zones with enemies say twice that level, and unless you discover the other quest that rewards you a way through this, you just have to wait until you're level appropriate for the zone to complete this quest, making the actual quest rewards themselves now worthless).

While all of this is going on, the story bosses in the back half of the game are jumping up in levels at pace I just simply could not keep up with and found myself stuck in this nightmarish catch-22 where I couldn't grind the standard enemies in the zone the boss was in, because they gave me virtually no XP, but then the boss would curbstop my ass cause I'd be like ten levels behind and get "red tagged" which nukes all kinds of stats and makes the fight miserable. I think this is some of the worst, most contradictory progression design we've ever seen in an RPG.

I had to play most of the back half of the game with “casual mode” enabled, because I was literally arriving to areas almost ten levels behind, and leaving those areas barely up to the level I was supposed to arrive at that area as, even while taking my time in each area and doing every side quest I could find. I could beat named enemies ten levels ahead of me, and the game wouldn't even level me up once. What on Earth are we doing here man?!

Yet this experience is just so special, so unique, so once in a moment, nothing could bring me down here. Moments may have come close to me having me ripping my hair out, but there was always the next off the chain hype moment to come to wash these feelings away.

I haven’t felt such excitement to boot up a game. Such joy and wonder while playing a game, for such a long time. It has arguably some of the best characters in any media, rich, textured, nuanced, complex and loveable. I usually want to skip through cutscenes and get through to the next gameplay section, but getting to the next cutscene was a reward in itself, seeing these characters grow, reveal new parts of themselves and their chemistry solidify.

Well except Shulk, God I want to bitch slap this dude so bad. Stop doing your silly shounen hero routine, it is not cool, not sexy. Just talk to your God damn companions like they ask you to over and over, for God's sake. Like genuinely 99 percent of this game's story could have been circumvented if Shulk just spoke openly to his companions. Shulk is basically the primary antagonist of this game simply because he won’t say anything.

But again, maybe Shulk should be a dealbreaker too, but he just… isn’t… because those hype moments! The twists and the turns (arguably they go sorta twist overkill in the final third and kinda derail their own story, but oh man, the hype moments it creates). This feeling of being on this truly epic journey, going from breathtaking peak of human creativity environment to the next, somehow each new vista grander than the one that came before it.

I was locked the ***** in. I cried until tears streamed down my face. I laughed until my tummy hurt. I gripped my controller and roared with emotion along with the characters in solidarity.

How did so much of this get lost in Xenoblade 2?

[Edited Sat 15th Aug 2026 by Pizzamorg]