niko_of_death

Dragon Quest XI strikes an incredible balance between series/genre tradition and modernization. Playing it (or rather replaying it, although I'm farther now in the Switch version than I ever was in the PC version) alongside DQII and VII really makes me appreciate this. Whereas Final Fantasy's attempts to stray from genre norms miss more often than hit for me (XII being the main exception), DQXI has perhaps the perfect middle ground between traditional and modern (for the series, that is, as I feel tradition is a very important part of the franchise). The overworld is far more detailed and lively, but still distinctly feels like a JRPG overworld. The skill tree is impactful enough to not feel superfluous, while also simple enough to feel like an addition to the progression system, rather than an overhaul of it. Hell, even something as small as including the XP needed to level up in the attributes but keeping the Divination option in churches for the sake of tradition is really nice.

I do wish Party Talk was more dynamic like it was in earlier games though; In DQVII most of the time when I think "I wonder what Maribel thinks about that conversation" she has a party talk line about it, whereas when I'm really curious what Hendrik has to say about a side conversation it's still just the general plot/area party talk. I do understand that it's an immense amount of work (the pictures of DQVII's script are scary), but it's disappointing nonetheless (and probably the only "major" disappointment I have with the game).

Noticed the audio sounded poor when I was playing the beta, assumed it was just an oddness of the sound design and/or my audio setup. Glad to know it's not just something on my end, hopefully it can be improved, the sound was always one of the best parts of Halo.

@brian_: I mean it makes sense given he went out of his way to tell his fans not to give up on it. My friend was dead set on never watching again when he got forced out, now he's slightly open to it. And its obvious that NWA wanted to keep him.

I understand why it happened but man Cornette's commentary was one of my favorite parts of Power, hopefully they find someone good to replace him.

@hansolol: ngl I lost it when Punk asked Renee who her favorite shield member was. Also I'm totally down for Backstage being a weekly "everyone shits on Rollins" show as its been so far

Well CM Punk's back I guess.

How is Brock consistently the best thing on any show he's on. My boy Brennan out their taking F5's on the monitors like a pro.

bruh moment

So apparently only 20 of the people (total, not just talent) who went to Saudi Arabia have come home. Hopefully its nothing too serious. Smackdown should be interesting to say the least.

@shiftygism: Cain/Brock and Fury/Strowman were weird for me. They weren't great matches but I found them to be a cool different thing to do (doing an MMA style finish and essentially a 10 count KO), I think it just goes to show how much WWE could be improved by just letting there be some more variety in the match style.

The survivor series NXT thing is really interesting since they're going to have wargames the night before, you either have to make wargames seem like less "damaging" a match than it's hyped up as (and make guys work double time), or keep the top guys off of the survivor series teams.

The idea Bryan talked about on today's WOL (having a chance for the Universal title to return to RAW) would make the show a lot more interesting, having something tangible at stake is what Survivor Series has really needed.

Crown Jewel was actually pretty good, easily the best saudi show so far. Mansoor vs Cesaro is definitely worth going out of your way to see, the crowd was surprisingly hot the entire show but for that match especially. I'm glad Fury won at least (not that I expected otherwise after that entrance lol), the Team Hogan vs Team Flair was "really good raw main event" tier, nothing particularly special but good for what it was. I'm seemingly in the minority in liking the red light stuff for the fiend matches, which of course makes my perception of the match a lot different. Definitely liked the finish though.