KestrelPi

Whoof. I'm in December Palace and these mouse corridors are just the woooorst. It's okay the first time but then they do it over and over again. It's by far the most tedious bit of dungeon design I've encountered in the whole game. I just got to another one and just doooon't wanna do it.

Yeah, this. And like... I probably wouldn't have much to say about it if it was just some silly series I didn't care about. Not like it's the first game that ever had a bad gay stereotype in it. It's just this particular series which does many things so well it's super frustrating that it continually has these blind spots that get in the way of its own themes. I want it to be better with this stuff. Because I like it.

If we can be annoyed by a streaming policy we can be annoyed that for the last couple of games, gay stuff has been written as something that the characters should be on their guard about, or at BEST a joke. It's shitty. And we can acknowledge and talk about that and still be enjoying the game as a whole.

Oh, they don't specifically say Futaba is autistic, but they definitely drop plenty of hints that she isn't neurotypical. I THINK this aspect of her character is written quite well for the most part, but I agree with whoever said that they way the others try to force her out of it isn't great.

But yeah, I think there's lots of suggestion in the dialogue that the way she acts isn't simply because she's a little socially anxious, but because she processes information differently. I like her character a lot, not so much the bits that happen right after her dungeon.

On the gay characters, the reason I think it's so disappointing is that this series, and especially this game in the series has always flirted with ideas about breaking free of what society expects of you and being true to yourself, but it ends up having this blind spot when it comes to sexuality. Gay stuff is treated as something to be laughed at or feared by the main characters and it's a REAAAAL shame. "You're a slave of society's norms, break those chains etc but remember to at least always be super grossed out by gay stuff, whatever you do!"

It's like Kanji in the last game. I get that they didn't want the character to be gay, and that bit of his story was just his insecurity about liking cute stuff manifesting as insecurity about his sexuality. And his is a cool story and his is one of my favourite characters ever.

But they still can't resist bringing it up as a joke over and over again, usually by Yosuke fretting over whether he's 'safe' around Kanji. And... just STOP, folks, you're so close to having something more interesting to say on this subject, and the games would be better for it.

Kinda wish that all the male characters weren't super creepy around women too. That stuff has been getting worse and worse the last few games. And it's weird, because the girls are obviously written to be uncomfortable about it, which is appropriate, but they still keep writing party characters to be massive creepers anyway.

Surprised anyone prefers Yosuke to Ryuji.

Yosuke is a jerk. He's the worst. He whines constantly, is 100% self-centered, he's so insecure about his masculinity that he never manages to miss an opportunity to fret over Kanji, he constantly makes terrible decisions and the only good thing about completing his social link is that at least you get to punch him.

Ryuji has some of the same qualities, but far more endearingly, and has far more of a fleshed out in character justification for acting a prick sometimes.

But I'm going to make a case for Morgana actually being the #1 best bud of the crew. After all, he shares the Magician Arcana with Yosuke - which is usually reserved for the Best Bud spot in these games, spends far more time hanging out with you than any of the other characters, and also 12/10 would pet.

@do_the_manta_ray: I mean yeah, I'm not trying to say he has to be involved in everything - but it does seem like it'd be a bit of a weird choice in this case because this is exactly the sort of thing that is hugely improved by his presence. I could stand for him to be in fewer retro game playthroughs, if it meant he could be in stuff like this.

I like Alex and I've grown to... tolerate Dan, but riffing on goofy shit is Vinny's jam

As soon as I started playing this (my first one in the series) I was thinking how it had Endurance Run / at least some sort of GB play through potential, but mostly that was because I wanted to hear Vinny's reaction to everything. If it's just going to be Alex and Dan, not sure that I'll even bother tbh. This stuff is what Vinny does best.

@razzuel: I think probably it's more that they amounted to about 30 minutes of minor annoyances in what was a decently long game so I proportionally just am not that bothered by it. The vast, vast majority of the game was things working exactly as intended, and seemed very believable, which is pretty good going for a game in which an AI companion accompanies you for almost the full duration. I get what you mean about the feeding parts (although I think you misunderstood - I was referring to the tail thing when I was talking about physics) but... didn't happen to me, and if it did I don't think I'd have cared that much to be honest.

Actually, the two extra examples you mention are ones I experienced myself. But the first one is more of a physics issue than an AI issue, no? I found that just waiting a bit was enough to fix it, but also calling Trico to various spots would have also fixed it. But sure - that part relied on some wonky physics.

And I had the exact same problem with that other bit that you described which DID feel more like an AI issue, but I don't recall anything else in the game even remotely like it. And it seems to be the one part of the game people are calling out over and over, which suggests to me it's more of an issue specific to that situation.

To be exhaustive, there was one other bit where I really struggled to get Trico to go up the wall I wanted for about 10 minutes, but that one struck me as be more of a level design issue - it was a tight area with lots of walls and it was going to be difficult to convey exactly what I needed to happen even if the AI was 100% responsive. Most of the rest of the level design is much less ambiguous and I had a lot more success directing Trico with a degree of precision without it feeling too much like a well-trained dog, which I think would have been the wrong way to go.

But this is the exact distinction people are making which I think you're not getting. I would agree that it would be bad if the game felt broken, but for the most part (excepting for the one part which I described above) I never felt like I was fighting broken AI, I felt like I was trying to work with an animal that had some degree of independence, didn't always want to do what I needed and didn't always understand perfectly.

That's not 'hand waving' - it was very clear to me in that one major example when it stopped being what the game was supposed to be, and started being the game not working as intended.

I will agree that people's mileage will vary with this - that much seems obvious from the discussion around the game, but I absolutely don't think that this is about people hand-waving away issues, they're just picking up what the game is putting down, and enjoying the slower pace and greater degree of patience that this style of play forces.

I've seen a couple of YouTube plays of the opening stretches of the game, now, and the ones that like it the most always seem to be the ones that understand that Trico is designed not to give instant feedback to everything that happens around him. Perfect example of that, there's an early bit of the game where the player has to try to coax Trico into some water using a barrel, and I saw one video where the player chucked the barrel in the water, and because Trico didn't immediately jump in the water after it, turned around to get another barrel, and then complained that they missed the big dive. Because the animators took the time to show Trico spot the barrel, back up a little as if to reconsider, go back and forth a few times as if psyching up to do it, and then finally going for it.

Sure, that's not a part about directly commanding Trico, but it's similar in that it's not going to play well with people who don't understand that taking time, being patient is part of the game, by design. This seemed very clear to me, by the end, and if that's not for you, cool! But we're not just making excuses, either.

Y'know I think a lot of the criticisms of the AI are overblown. Most of the time I found Trico a little slow to respond, and sometimes did the wrong thing, but I was cool with it because it just seemed... like a realistic interaction with a weird giant lovable goof, and it rarely took so long that I was getting frustrated.

There's one sequence which was the exception, where it felt very different and DID feel like the game was breaking instead of me just trying to communicate with my weird bud.

It's the bit where you twice have to send Trico diving underwater. I found it really hard to get him to dive, and then very often he'd dive and I'd come off his back, or he wouldn't make it all the way into the tunnel, which suuucked.

But aside from that, I thought it was just fine, really conveyed trying to coax an animal into doing something in a way that was more interesting and endearing than it was frustrating.

Oh- also, I finished it earlier, and yes, I loved it. It doesn't quite have what SotC had for me, but I feel like it works as a weirdly inverted Ico, and has enough of those moments where SotC is at its most exhilirating that you can see that in its blood too. It's a 3rd game to be proud of and I hope that team has more (and sooner!)