ANaturalFirmness

I'm not sure if something crazy happened in between the beta and now or if I just didn't use the beta site enough to notice but I really feel like it is incredibly hard to follow what's going on right now. Things also seem broken in bad ways.

For example, I have the GB playdate in my watchlist which shows me that the latest show is a Black Ops video. I see that but don't click on it because I'm still looking at other things. I end up clicking at the top of the page to videos -> watchlist and it takes me to the landing page. I see the GB playdate show there and remember there's a new video so I click it. Instead of taking me to the black ops video it takes me to a video from 3 weeks ago that I'm pretty sure I already watched. But, the upload date is from a couple days ago so I start clicking through the carousel to see if maybe this is a new video. I'm also trying to find that Black OPs video because that's supposedly the last video I haven't watched. However, the dates in the titles and the upload dates don't match so I get even more confused. I try switching to the grid and now there are enough videos on screen that I can see that the beginning of the year is to the left and the newest videos are to the right. So I go to the last page and see that there have been two new GB playdate videos.

I'm no designer but it feels like it should not be so confusing to check what the next video in a series you're watching is especially since this new redesign seems so heavily influenced by hulu and netflix. What I would have liked to had happen would have been to click on the GB Playdate and get dropped into either the newest video or the video after the last video I watched. Getting dropped into some random video was super confusing.

There are also random videos showing up in my "continue watching feed" that I've never watched. Not really sure what's going on there.

Also, there's a whole lot of empty grey space on the front page now. While it looks good on mobile, it looks unnecessarily empty on a computer screen. There's just like nothing going on other than some video thumbnails. And a big banner telling me I'm a premium subscriber. Also, the main thumbnail is so badly blown out it looks like a random screengrab on Plex when it couldn't download the metadata information to properly populate a wallpaper. Kind of a bad look that that's the very first thing you see when you load the site.

Overall I think turning the website into a netflix type experience would be really awesome. As it stands it just doesn't feel refined or finished yet.

EDIT: I have found refuge in the Latest Videos area and this is now my giantbomb bookmark. At least there I can tell what is happening without my senses being assaulted by 5 different video streams all telling me different information on the same 10 videos or shows.

I've only played about 4 hours or less but so far it's really hooked me. I read somewhere to treat it like you're watching an anime and I have to say - it's the best start to an anime in seasons.

Combat seems okay but I know it'll ramp up in the future. I just started Chapter 2 so I can't wait to get further in and have some Blades to customize. For my money, Pyra's design doesn't really bother me except for her shorts. I'm surprised her butt isn't falling out of them. I do think her generic "oblivious, 50 ft stare" is going to play into the story in some way. If it doesn't than maybe I do hate Pyra's design.

I definitely think some of the other Blades and characters that I've already run into do look a lot better. Nia and her Blade both have really cool designs and I like the design for Malo's Blade.

I never finished either XB1 or XBX but I did enjoy the time I spent with them. The stories dragged too much to keep me interested in them until the big twist (that I heard happens) so I'm hoping that this one keeps my interest for the long haul.

I also just started playing Trails in the Sky. About 8 hours in now (I've done the first couple story missions in chapter 1) and it's pretty good. The story seems almost painfully slow and predictable, but I'm having fun running around killing monsters. I was really pleasantly surprised that Estelle didn't have violent tendencies like a lot of others with her characterization trope have.