krelmoon

@north6: fair enough but Tencent as the list at the start of this post stated has financial fingers in large parts of nearly every every part of this hobby. Steam is expanding into China and they will be just as much a part of the problem as Tencent is. Nearly every manufacturer of packaged goods routes manufacturing through China. The situation in Hong Kong is dire. It’s going to get worse day by day and then we will hear nothing as western media is slowly pushed out. The Chinese Government has decided to take a potentially massive financial loss in Hong Kong in order to bring it into mainland Chinese rule. No boycott or protest will change that now. If I thought abandoning the gaming hobby or not putting money into the Chinese government would work I would be all for it. But China is so intertwined in every aspect of the global economy now that I don’t know how I can spend any money on anything anywhere without contributing to the problem. Political forces back in the late 70’s early 80’s thought if we brought western businesses into China that their totalitarian government would eventually fail. But what has happened is that we have become dependent on the government of China to keep us in inexpensive electronic manufacturing and now they have all the leverage. It’s bad it’s maddening but other than 1. destroying the global economy to starve out China something that would require cooperation between all nations to do effectively 2. Chinese citizens uprising all across China (not just Hong Kong) or 3. Going to nuclear war over it it’s not going to be solved anytime soon. It’s bigger than me, this hobby, this website, this community. Sorry for the rant pray for Hong Kong if you are comfortable doing so.. avoid Chinese companies if you feel you can do so. I just don’t know if anything will matter.

No amount of protest will move China’s government on anything. China doesn’t have to care so they don’t. I left Hong Kong in 1996 when the handoff happened and even then there was a feeling that this would happen eventually. 1. Our Global Economy is all based on Chinese Manufacturing 2. China is a nuclear power no country on this planet has the leverage to tell them to do or not to do anything. I’m open to ideas and am gutted for the people of Hong Kong but if the Chinese government has calculated that they can get away with this, they probably can. Getting as many of those people out of there as possible is maybe all we can do at this point and that only works if China allows them to leave. I really wish it was as easy as a boycott but it is not.

I don’t have much to add. I avoided TLOU2 because of my state of mind and what we are going through. That’s not the developer fault, or the people that are somehow in the mood for this games fault and it has taken me a week or so to internalize this and say it is okay for people to like this game. But the actions of fans and the developers once it was out there 1. Seem to have nothing to do with the game itself 2. Cast a bad shadow over gaming and AAA developers in general. I know some people are bored and that Naughty Dog and Druckmann are particularly sensitive about there baby, but there are no excuses for the behavior on display out there. There are issues going on in the world more important than a single game even if it is a very good one.

Putting in a afterburner kit was my first soldering case-mod task. still have that Modded GBA the front light from that kit was never as bright as an SP but it fixed the problem till the SP came out. Only thing bad about the GBA other than the screen was the sound hardware which you only realize in hindsight on emulation really. I might not have noticed if not for all of the Super Nintendo ports on the GBA to compare music from.

I would be potentially in the market for this and I wasn’t going to get a XSX or PS5 previously. My apartment/condo can’t handle a bigger screen and I can tell the difference between 1080P and 4K on a “tiny” 46’ setup. the the odds of me moving into a bigger place before this console cycle ends is not zero but pretty low. I was content to sit out this cycle and may anyway but just wanted you to know there is a weird use case for a non 4K new console. Real estate in New England may not be ready for the next gen of gaming. Maybe I just need to get a 4K hdr monitor, any suggestions?

@cory7911: agreed GBA not N64 Vinny is a national treasure that must be protected. Don’t do Vinny like that. New Stainia would also be good.

It’s not impossible but it does seem really difficult to talk about this game critically without spoiling the plot. So they may or may not review the game outside of quick look and podcast impressions. Final Fantasy 7 remake was on the long side and it is possible no one finished it. And another consideration is the lockdown streams and unprecedented time have made it harder to make time for game review writing. Just like every thing else this year you might have to be patient things won’t go back to normal anywhere till everyone been vaccinated. No intention to be political or anything that’s the only way CBS is going let them back in the building. It’s pretty depressing but all these home streams has helped me deal. Hope it helps the rest of you too.

So no you’re not the only one but a lot of people don’t like this game sums up this thread just fine. I wasn’t going to play it for the sake of just being off of video game violence lately and nothing I’ve heard has made me regret that. The mechanics of the game sound exactly like the first and I didn’t like them then. Story is more important to some people than others. Everyone’s different if you are okay with a game that no one else likes (not this one, we have established a meta critic that’s pretty high here some other theoretical bad game) that doesn’t make you a monster obviously just different and at this point we should be embracing those differences

I say it’s standard visual novel gameplay but the Persona series is probably the first visual novel/RPG to be translated to English. And even in 2008 when Persona 4 came out originally they were not common.

Tap soda machines you can only buy 5 cans at a time per week and each can only revives 10 spirit points each but it is one of the only ways the game gives you to turn yen into spirit points. Spirit points expenditures are the only limiting factor in dungeon exploration and you want to spend the least amount of you limited time in dungeons as possible. Ideally you would only go into a dungeon on rainy days with nothing else going on. There are specific shadows and items that only show on rainy days, the item shop in town has a discount on healing and status items on rainy days. If possible use items to recover hit points to save your sprit points for spell casting. There are Persona that learn the passive skill invigorate that will recover you main character’s spirit points each turn this is one of the only other ways to recover spirit points and you can abuse it to break the game and march through dungeons in one day. The key is to only cast spells with the main character that has a invigorate spell equipped and try not to cast more spirit points than you recover per turn. There are three levels of invigorate in the game but you will start to see Persona with Invigorate 2 early in the game. Most shadows have some sort of element weakness that will knock them down and chains of attack’s can knock down the whole enemy’s party causing an all out attack to open up usually ending the combat in a victory and unlocking an shuffle time event which is how you pickup new Persona. Playing the Pokemon collection and fusion of Persona well is key to being able to exploit shadow weaknesses and plowing through the game. Last point the only real action element of this game is battle advantage you have to wack the shadows in the back to gain initiative and a free set of turns. If you miss and the shadows hit you first the enemy has a full set of turns to attack and early in the game this can result in a quick game over. There is also a neutral where neither party has advantage when you don’t quite nail the hit on it. The only other mechanism to worry about are the main characters attributes as not having enough knowledge, courage, diligence, expression or understanding will limit your interactions with the rest of the gameplay outside of the dungeon which is standard visual novel fare. There is plenty of time to max out everything in one play through in the golden version.