Glen-i

Player's Choice night at 8pm tonight. I've been playing with this idea in the past two weeks, but I'll clarify it now. If we finish the third GP before 8:45pm, I'll go ahead and start up a fourth GP. No-one's obligated to take part, so don't feel you have to if you need to be somewhere else. But the track variety rule would still be in effect, so avoid repeat tracks.

I'm wondering @Hero-of-Time, what did you think of the EMMI's? You never mentioned them, and seeing as they're a significant part of the game, (subsequently ruining my enjoyment of Dread), I'd like to hear your opinion, seeing as you and I madly agree on Other M being fun.

I use Chrome on my Android and it works perfectly fine as far as spoiler tags go? It might be something on your end.

I assume you meant the Chrom finisher? I only did it to get a dramatic ending shot, didn't expect the move to be complete in time.

You don't have an active NSO account, do you? Otherwise, I would suggest an online 2-player playthrough.

I'm 32! I haven't even had a mid-life crisis yet! I may be many things, but emotionally sad is not one of them. Socially pathetic, sure! But I'm a happy dude as long as I get to play Smash when the mood strikes me.

Time matches tonight at 8pm.

This has happened a few times, but it's still always weird when an old member from before I joined resurfaces.

Here's one I actually knocked up earlier. Don't even pretend to be surprised that I went with a Pokémon. And don't even pretend to be surprised that I've had that for 4 years. You gave me an opportunity to shamelessly plug a picture I drew, and I'll damn well take it!

That green section on the bottom left is really throwing me off!

No amount of accessories can disguise the ugly Shovelware Wii Sports Knock-off look, so it's not a great trade-off. Miitopia managed over 100 elaborate costumes for Miis, this game has no excuse.

We'll be doing a 4th GP of Player's choice if anyone wants to hang around.

@Will, is that you with the Japanese Mii name?

Can we have the resurection of Dinosaurs in games next, please?

Reposting tonight's theme for the new page. Theme Night: Tonight 8pm

A reminder that tonight's session at 8pm is a theme night. So remember to keep the above image open in a tab somewhere so you know which track to choose.

I once saw a very brilliant one-sentence description for Katamari Damacy. I think it went something like: "A prince must pick up litter to make up for his father's alcoholism." And yet, the actual game is far weirder then that. It would make for an amazing Assist Trophy for Smash Bros.

Well, that's reassuring then. Even if the unlikely event that Netflix doesn't license that third season were to occur, Crunchyroll would likely snap it up, and I'd get to watch it.

Honestly thought I had you on that last match, @Ike. Well earned comeback!

No, I haven't accidentally clicked this thread, snapped to the comment box, and typed all this without realising where I am. I am here to actually talk about an anime I watched. You'd think with all the JRPG's I snarf down, I'd be more keen on it, but nah. Not my thing 99% of the time. I think I've been here once before, but that was to talk about an anime with a hilarious English dub that doesn't stick to the source material one bit. The name of that escapes me. Coincidentally, the only Dragon Ball I enjoy is the abridged series by Team Four Star. So you can be certain of just how far my anime-critiquing credentials go. But this time, the N-Europe equivalent of a Triple Rainbow is here to talk about a more serious anime. I'm sure some of you have already talked about this, but this thread is 93 pages long! Yeah, I can't be bothered... My cousin, @Ugh first aid, loves anime, but she knows me well enough to not recommend me everything she likes. So when she suggested that I should give Beastars a shot, I kinda had to. It must be at least entertaining enough for her to recommend it to me. And what 90's kid doesn't dig some anthopormorphic animal stuff? Should be a fun time. OK, maybe don't show it to the 90's version of me then? Still, violence is cool and all, I can deal with... Ah... OK... I'd post the "This better not awaken something in me" GIF, but I've already used three pictures. Now, I'm no prude, but there's a certain, let's go with "audience", that immediately jumped to my mind when that content warning came up. And shut up! I'm not the only one. Don't even try to deny it! Kink shaming is not cool and all, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to giving my cousin a glance that could only be described as "You sure about this?". I don't know why I'm even bothering with a synopsis when the chances are, that most of you are aware of it, but here goes. This show mostly focuses on Legosi, a teenage wolf going through high school. He has atrocious posture, and zero social skills. Kinda like me, now that I think about it. Oh, and the series opens up with him almost eating a fellow student, so maybe not like me, after all. You see, Beastars isn't quite the kind of funny animal show where animals act like humans that you'd see all the time in kids programming, there's an underlying hint of feralness to everyone here. Simply put, carnivores like Legosi have a built-in, inherent urge to eat herbivores. That's illegal, you see, so carnivores have to spend their life suppressing that basic instinct. I mentioned a fellow student a little while ago. She's a rabbit called Haru, and Legosi starts to develop a crush on her, which is the only reason he doesn't follow through on his instincts and kill her at the start. So Legosi has to deal with the conflicting feelings of love for Haru, and his feral wolf heritage screaming "Rabbits are nummy!" at him. Meanwhile, a different student is not so lucky, because he's killed and eaten by a carnivore, leading to a murder investigation taking place in the school and driving an obvious wedge between the carnivore and herbivore students. And as the series progresses, it becomes more and more apparent that, while the outside world would prefer everyone to get along, it is really not that simple. Quite frankly, for the first time ever, if I was offered a way to go to a world full of cool, anthropormorphic animals like the program I just watched, I'd give it a hard pass. That universe blows, it'd be awful to live there. And yet, for that very reason, I pretty rapidly became compelled in the series, especially when more and more evidence of this world's problems emerged (The black market comes to mind). There's a constant uneasiness to everything, because you quickly realise that at any moment, one of those funny looking animals could just snap and go feral. When that does happen, which it will, the show does a good job of really expressing that. Speaking of that, I have to praise the animation on show. I don't have much of a barometer for animation quality in anime, so I'm not sure what the standard is these days, but everything looks like it has a real weight to it, especially in fight scenes. There's some really weird and experimental framing going on as well. I dig it. Top notch! I've watched both seasons now, and I preferred the second one. The focus on what happened to that murdered student was more interesting then the first season's focus on Legosi and Haru's relationship. Not to say I didn't enjoy the first season, they're both good. Oh, and Legosi is an entertaining protagonist. You do feel for the poor guy, even when you're laughing at his sheer, unbridled, awkwardness when interacting with others. Season 1 has by far the better intro sequence, though. That song is a proper bop! Smashing stop-motion animation there, Gromit! I didn't skip that once! The second intro ditches that for more standard anime fare, and while fine, I didn't bother watching it every time. So yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say. I hope a Season 3 happens, but with Netflix cancelling all sorts of shows left, right, and centre recently, who can say?

Uh-oh! It's a Theme Night coming your way! Let's Play Smash Brawl! Bound to happen sooner or later. Can't really replicate the tripping or Meta Knight being insanely OP, but we'll make do. Bloody Little Mac and his bloody KO Punch ruining my 23 win streak... Now, keep in mind that Brawl was the first time we got the dreaded character cut, so it's not just Echo Fighters you have to ignore, but the likes of Mewtwo and Dr. Mario are also not allowed. To keep in the spirit of Brawl, I'm discouraging the use of some costumes. Mario - Builder and Wedding costumes not allowed Link - Classic tunic styles only Yoshi - Crafted texture not allowed Ike - Younger versions only (The default style uses the younger version, for reference) Pokémon Trainer - Male (Red) version only Stages are what you would expect, plus the 10 Melee stages that were in Brawl. Items follow the same theme as well. Format - 3 stock, 10 minutes FS Meter - Off See you tonight at 8pm!

I remember basically ignoring all the other trees until I got to that "Half MP" perk, and by the time I got there, it became apparent that Boomerangs had lost their early game effectiveness, and Fisticuffs would've been a waste. So I went all in with Sword next. Because Sword is almost always gonna have a Hero-exclusive weapon that rocks. Of course, that's the joy of the skill tree system in Dragon Quest. Allows some flexibility without having to work in a job system.

While H-O-T is right that the Hero has a lot of useful skills across most trees, I find that Omniheal (Courage) is a priority, the skill after that halves the MP he needs to cast spells, which is also very useful. Putting 100 points into Courage and Swords will allow Hero to use his most powerful attack, so that's what I would go for as a long term goal.

Grandia is a turn-based RPG developed by Game Arts that originally released on the Sega Saturn back in 1997. That version never left Japan though, we'd have to wait until 2000 until the game was ported to the PlayStation. While I have dabbled with that version, it wouldn't be until the HD remaster that released on the Switch in 2019 until I finally played through it just recently. Before I get started with my usual spiel, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the issues that particular collection has. When it first came out, it was plagued with problems, such as the Japanese voice acting not working halfway through the game, numerous crashes, text not appearing, audio cues being missed. It's a humongous mess. However, a patch did eventually come out that fixed most of those issues, most being the key word. More on that in a bit. The game follows Justin and his 8-ish year old friend/close enough to adopted sister, Sue. They live in a port town on a remote island, but Justin has his eyes set on becoming an adventurer and exploring the wide world beyond the sea. Fate throws him a bone when he explores some ruins and finds something called a Spirit Stone and meets someone called Liete who tells him about a mythical land called Alent and how it's most definitely real. That's all the incentive he needs to get on a ship and set off to find Alent. Along the way, he meets a professional adventurer called Feena who, after some wacky hijinks, accompanies Justin. Will Justin find Alent? Does it even exist? Will Feena consider more appropriate clothing when the inevitable snow area comes around? The answers may shock you! No-one show this to the Pokémon Company lawyers, OK? When it comes to the gameplay of Grandia, the one thing that jumps out at me is the IP system. During battles, everyone moves rightward in real time on that bar on the bottom right of the screen. When someone reaches the "Com" section, time freezes and you'll be able to select a command. That's not quite the end of a turn though. After selecting a command, that character will continue moving toward the far end of the IP bar, toward "Act", where they will perform their command. Now this is important, if someone gets hit by a powerful attack while they're in between "Com" and "Act", their action will get cancelled and they'll have to wait until their next turn to try again. This works both ways, you can cancel enemies and they can cancel you. So battles hinge on taking into account stuff like attack animations, magic casting time, and so on. The first thing that jumped out at me was that Child of Light pretty much has the same battle system, which is quite fitting, seeing as Ubisoft published the PlayStation version over here in the EU. (Man, I would love a sequel to Child of Light) Getting stronger is done with your standard experience point gathering, but alongside this, a character's skill with weapons and magic can increase through repeated usage, allowing more abilities to use. If you've played Secret of Mana, you'll understand what I'm talking about. The battle system is absolutely solid, but I do have some issues with the structure of the overworld. The game has a really annoying habit of blocking off areas as you progress through the plot, it's so ridiculous that by the end of the game, you can't go anywhere except 3 different areas, and none of them even have a shop! Because of this, loads of items are permanently missable, and I hate that in RPG's. This isn't helped by the very confusing, mazelike, dungeons. The camera can be freely rotated, but there's no kind of map to help keep your bearings, so it's very easy to get lost. And that's before I mention the habit the game has of hiding objects behind scenery. The game makes consulting a guide very appealing. This screenshot would've been nice, if it wasn't for one issue... The visuals utilise 3D models for its areas, and 2D spritework for the characters. The 3D aspect is fine, but it's the sprites that I have problems with. Now, don't get me wrong, the spritework is amazing. Fluid animation with lots of charm to each character. It's very, very good. Which makes it such a humongous shame that the HD remaster puts this ugly smoothing filter over all of them. I'm sure some of you know what I mean, that thing that some remasters do that blur sprites together in an attempt to hide the apparently heinous crime of having visible pixels. There's no option to turn this filter off here, and it ruins the great spritework of the original game. The audio is also solid, there's partial voice acting here, and for it's time, it's pretty decent. (Temper your expectations, it is a 90's game) The soundtrack is great though, really unconventional for the genre, but it's catchy enough, I certainly enjoyed it. For all my misgivings with it, this is a very good RPG. It has a real sense of adventure, and the storyboarding is top notch for the limited technology it's on. The downsides are not enough to dampen my liking for this game. It's worth dealing with the ugly filter, because this might be one of my favourite PS1 RPG's, just make sure you patch it first... Shut up, I know it's a Sega Saturn game, but not over here.