Julius

Just to add some context from Suikoden to what @Glen-i said, there were a number of times in those games where temporary members would join your party for certain story beats; I think there were times that as many as 4 slots (including the main character) were essentially determined for you, other times you might need a certain trio in your party when talking to a recruitable character to recruit them, and so on. I'm not deep enough into Eiyuden to comment on how smoothly it's done it yet, but I'll be shocked if it doesn't use a heavy EXP multiplier like the early Suikoden games did, which made it a breeze to bring a new recruit joining you at, say, Lv 5, up to Lv 50 in just a few battles. This allowed for constant reconfiguring of your party and testing out new characters, which worked even better if you threw the new recruit in one of the back corners of your setup. This is also super important considering that mastering the game's battle mechanics is going to depend on having a setup which produces the most potential Hero Combos. For Suikoden and Suikoden II, outside of story beat-assigned characters, I would generally stick to a main trio based on how the story evolved (typically MC and childhood/family friends), fill the party in a little with Hero Combos in mind, and then in the last slot or two throw in some of the cooler looking or heavier hitting characters. I'm planning to do the same here Also just seen the full trophy list @Hero-of-Time, looks like it'll definitely take a bit of a grind (max out weapons for all characters). I'll be going for recruiting everyone but I think I'll pass on grinding that out especially with how long some of the other mini-game related trophies will probably take!

Couple of years ago: Days Gone sells millions of copies following an admittedly mixed reception at launch due to being bug-ridden, but it's certainly popular. Plans for a franchise totally scrapped. PlayStation care about Metacritic scores just as much as sales, apparently. But they're still making a TV show, mind you! No-one: Absolutely no-one: PlayStation: SO ANYWAYS I STARTED REMAKING EVERYTHING NICHE AND/OR UNPOPULAR AND/OR NOT-SO-GREATLY RECEIVED. YOU GOT YOUR GRAVITY RUSHING TWICE REMAKE, CREEPY HORROR HOUSE WITH WEIRD FACES KINDA FIXED REMAKE, AND MEDIEVALEVIL SKELETOR REMAKE. THAT'LL BE 70 SQUIDDEMS TA AND HUZZAH. I simply don't understand what they're doing these days. It's actually incomprehensible. This goes beyond not feeling like my own game preferences are being met as consistently last gen by PlayStation, it feels like they're actively tarnishing how everything but AAAA first-party games are received by pushing out everything and anything which can skip most of pre-production due to being remakes at lower levels of development. The same generally goes for their TV and movie plans. Feels like they're beyond being dangerously prideful at this point. Thank goodness the PS5 is backwards compatible and that third-parties seem to be having a decent gen, I guess?

Bayer Leverkusen have now gone unbeaten for a stretch of 44 games in all competitions – breaking the previous record (43, set by Juventus in 2012) for the longest unbeaten run by a team in one of Europe's top five leagues. Actual insanity; they're less than 10 games away from an invincible treble. (& I've totally just jinxed them, haven't I?)

Previews dropping next Thursday (on the 25th) and reviews are dropping two days ahead of release (on the 21st May): Reviews releasing just two days ahead of launch would normally be a bit of a yellow flag, I feel, but with this being a remake, makes total sense; feel it'd probably get lost in the shuffle otherwise. I feel like the previews might be more important than the actual reviews this time around, because anything worth flagging is likely to come up in those, and so long as there's nothing crazy, I can't wait

It's the first, absolutely one of my favourites I watch it every year or so and it never fails to blow me away. The story and characters and world are great, but that music? It's my favourite Ghibli and favourite animated film (sorry, Prince of Egypt), and is in the eternal showdown up against a couple of others for the position of my favourite film of all-time. One of the greats

The fact that they highlight 100+ playable characters certainly makes me think it'll be the case they're all useable, but honestly I've kept the Kickstarter campaign at arm's length to avoid being spoiled, so I'm not sure if that's going to be a weird wording thing when all is done and dusted. But the way they word it certainly makes it sound like yes, there will be 100+ characters capable of joining your party (though not all at once, because I guess that'd be more of a rave) Begin corrections music pleaseeeeee The Suikoden series did not, in fact, gives you access to 108 "playable" characters to collect and battle with – while those games task you with assembling the 108 Stars of Destiny, not all of these Stars were playable (i.e. able to join your party and go out into the field): some would stay back at your base/castle to serve a purpose as an NPC, whether it be small talk, or as a shop or mini-game facilitator; others would only join the party temporarily; and some were entirely optional recruits that while technically Stars of Destiny, wouldn't be required recruits to meet the quota of 108 Stars for the game's true ending. There are also one or two branching recruits from what I remember meaning choosing to recruit one Star might mean not getting another, and so on. Looking it up, both Suikoden and Suikoden II have ~80 playable characters, and this number tailed off in later games as the series went on. If I'm remembering right there were technically over 120 potentially recruitable Stars in Suikoden II. Alright you can stop the corrections music if it's still playing now Hopefully you and others here leap at the chance to play the first two when that remastered collection releases though their silence on the re-release is a bit deafening OR FACE THE WRATH OF BEING ADDED TO MY IGNORE LIST (I'm kidding) (maybe) Murayama never would've done it because of his good relations with Konami after leaving, but the thought of it saying "108+" instead of just "100+" gives me a good chuckle

Princess Mononoke >>>>>

Just got the first couple of hours tonight and am creeping up to the inciting incident – taking much, much longer than both Suikoden and Suikoden II to get there, but we're certainly getting there. So, anyways, to cover the obvious: the game looks gorgeous. New areas/dungeons also get a bit of a feature, reminding me a bit of some of the special art we'd get to see entering a new spot in some of the older Pokémon games: With that out of the way, I'm enjoying it so far. Having first played and written at length about Suikoden and Suikoden II on here back in 2021 for the Gaming Diary thread, and coming away from those games a very big fan of them, I'll admit, I'm going into this game with very high expectations, and so far I'd say - time taken to get to the *actual* inciting incident aside - it's meeting those expectations. My biggest hope is that once it's done and dusted, I'd like for it to fall somewhere between the two. So it looks gorgeous (it's worth repeating, I mean just look at it!), the addition of voice work is a welcome one in a game with this much dialogue, there are little tweaks which aren't at all going over my head like having access to the inventory as a whole during battle rather than needing to assign items to individual party members that only they can access during battle, your protag has an actual voice and isn't just a blank slate which I'm a big fan of, there's a lot of silliness to go around, I'm not the biggest fan of 2.5D and HD-2D games because they can feel a bit floaty but this feels great to move around in, and heck, there's even a wonderful world map to look at and a handy list of objectives with some super clean UI to boot: Also worth highlighting is the wonderful character art you get to see when a new character joins your party, such as with Mio here: Combat is just as snappy as it was during my time with Suikoden and Suikoden II, and works in a very similar way, but there are some very welcome additions which seems like they'll keep things fresh, namely in the form of special boss gimmicks, seeing the full order of a round of combat adding another layer to your strategy, and something I'm still figuring out where you can use one character to defend another who is nearly downed. The way SP charges work and function for Rune-Lens use by filling up with a charge as they go a round of battle unused should add a nice element of risk-reward. The Rune Attacks of Suikoden return rebranded as Rune-Lens attacks, while the Unite Attacks return rebranded as Hero Combos, and they both look suitably awesome: Sword Rain is 100% the coolest move available from the start of the game. But Friendship Combo looks great too! As for nitpicks at this early stage, I've seen the loading screen in brief flashes a lot more than I honestly expected to when joining and leaving battles (maybe it'll get patched, who knows?), but there is an upside - and that's a lovely Suikoden carryover in the form of the protag running while things load up! It's the simple things connecting the two which are really making me smile this goes the other way too, though, such as Dux Aldric looking like an older Luca Blight with a bit of facial hair... ...and of course there's Cassandra, the innkeeper with a portrait (almost certainly meaning she's recruitable and will be managing the inn when we get a base) being a huge step down from Leona from Suikoden II Anyways, final little nitpick: 'Enter' being the text that shows up to enter and exit a building, so I've just been viewing it as entering the outdoors but it feels WEIRD... The music so far is also just...kind of fine, so far? We'll see how it turns out but I won't lie, that's where my expectations were probably lowest going into this game, given the crazy quality of the first two Suikoden OSTs. Anyways, not wanting to go out on a low but instead on a high, one last thing I want to though: the geopolitics of a fictional JRPG world, as was front and centre in Suikoden and Suikoden II, just feels great. Even after Final Fantasy XVI built a great world and political intrigue, the first two Suikoden games are the absolute height of this for me in JRPGs, and I already feel the tension creeping up over the smallest of things, just with how certain characters say ambiguous things, carry themselves, or correct people in a petty way. It hasn't quite made up for the lack of an inciting incident in the first 30 minutes, but I'm sure it could do by the time credits roll around. Been in a proper gaming rut of late, so I can't help but feel this has arrived at the perfect time – super excited to get back to it already!

Ooooo! I watched the Digital Foundry interview about this with the fine developer folk over at Redemption Road last month and they seem a lovely and earnest bunch, well worth a watch Looks like it'll be a brilliant time hope it comes to console at some point! Think they've mentioned Xbox before but hopefully it comes to other platforms too

While I agree that Indie World Showcases are the biggest shows consistently released specifically for indie titles, they're often lucky to break the 1 million views mark. They're nowhere near big enough to actually expand the audience for Silksong. Even in lieu of a Direct proper, for something like Silksong, I could see Nintendo coming up with any excuse to have a Partner Showcase and feature the title – I just think it would be going backwards to go from the first game shadow dropping during Nintendo's E3 Direct to an April Indie World Showcase that draws a fraction of the crowd. Heck, I'm sure that Nintendo not turning up with a Direct proper in 2022 is a big reason why it turned up at the Xbox Games Showcase instead. But, for the reasons I said above, I don't think an Xbox Games Showcase would be suitable for this game to shadow drop - they pull in a pretty niche slice of the gaming crowd, all things considered (and the thing being considered is that it's mostly Xbox fans, the smallest traditional platform to release on currently). Summer Game Fest would be absolutely suitable for this and draws in crowds from every platform, it would probably be the best event in terms of sheer eyes-on volume for this to drop during. But, checking the release schedule, I reckon that if we get a shadow drop or release date within the next month for Silksong, it'll be because of Shadow of the Erdtree launching 21st June. If Silksong is complete and ready to go, as the recent ratings would seem to suggest, I can easily imagine a scenario where they were waiting to shadow drop it at Xbox or SGF, learned of the Shadow of the Erdtree release date, and spotted that mid-April is pretty open by comparison. I think, at least in the diehard gaming crowd which has been fawning over Silksong updates for ages now, the overlap with the From crowd is pretty huge, and a lot of Hollow Knight's success overall is down to smart release timing and plenty of word of mouth to spread the word about the game. That'd be my guess anyways. Not saying it wouldn't be smart to drop tomorrow, there are just objectively bigger events coming up, and Shadow of the Erdtree is the only genuine reason I can think of wanting to avoid a mid-June release and deciding to just drop on a random Wednesday in April instead.

Stream with the latest updates dropping next Monday (22nd April) at 23:00 BST. UK inclusion confirmed?!?!?!?!?! Is this game the ultimate British Empire power fantasy?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Will there be tea and colonies?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Will the Queen somehow return?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! (okay but seriously a joke in this game about the difference between the United Kingdom vs Great Britain would be great)

The years are flying by because I 1000% thought that we'd had a Mina update and new footage more recently than Silksong, but nope, latest stuff I can find is still Q1 2022 for Mina (mostly stuff shortly after that Yacht Club presentation with the game's KS announcement) and June 2022 for Silksong during the Xbox Games Showcase. Some serious mind fudgery going on here. Let's get updates on both! Okay maybe that's a bit much to ask for but eh, why not It definitely feels that way for me, I feel like a Direct would make the most sense for a shadow drop if it were going to happen, absolutely got the most eyes on them during those. Indie Showcases do middling numbers by comparison. There's no chance in hell in my mind that it drops during an Xbox event (even with Game Pass deals and the like) simply because of how poorly it would get communicated that it was dropping on everything. I mean Xbox buy a couple of days of Atlus saying their games are coming to Xbox only in their trailers, for pity's sake! Wdym, we get so many fantasy farming sim indies shadow drop all of the time, there's no way Silksong is bigger than those

It's indie time! Everyone probably melting down after the recent Silksong ratings haha

A whole bunch of games leaving the service this month, 25 in total: Bunch of FF mainline titles bowing out, guess it makes sense as I suppose they wanted that impact up to and shortly after Rebirth, but still: that's one heck of a cull.

What have we here? In what feels like a rare event these days, the reverse is suitably gorgeous too – look at all that character art! Very excited for this going to start the install now, and I'll be back with some impressions later/tomorrow!

Yup, a solid night in the end, nice to see a big win. Been a disastrous couple of seasons since Ted and co. took over, but hopefully we can finish the season strong and kick on. This team needs some more experienced players around, though, as seen from the spot kick shoving around that went on; it's simply not acceptable. This is what happens when you spend big on a bunch of kids though, I guess, it was good to see Gallagher stepping in but well, there needs to be more to it Actually heard a bit of Dele Alli's punditry on it around them not showing up to be fighting for the pen late on against United but wanting to nab it off the now joint scorer in the league this season when we're already 4-0 up, it's embarrassing. But enough of that, crazy stats time: Palmer is the first to score in 7 (!) successive games at the Bridge, and has scored more goals this season for us in the Prem (20) than Havertz did in three combined (19). If he continues to kick on this then I'll consider City's De Bruyne debt paid off by karma

Yeah, I still find it hilarious that Bayern thought that they wanted and needed Pep so bad - just six months after making it to the UCL final - that they effectively forced out a legend like Heynckes, whose team in 12/13 then went on to break multiple records and won an unprecedented treble. The ultimate middle finger from Jupp because Pep then not being able to win the UCL with that team is probably the only real stain on his CV, I love it Eh, Tenet has massive issues and is pretentious as hell, but up until that point Nolan's films pretty much all bang. I love the Dark Knight trilogy but so many of his "smaller" films I'd argue are a much better showcase of his talents, like Memento or The Prestige. Funnier yet, though - with @Hero-of-Time not rating Nolan in particular - I think Nolan is to modern film what Kojima has been for games and have for a long time - how they tackle their auteurship is kind of freakily similar, they both absolutely need focus and to be reined in - and the critical response to Death Stranding reminds me a lot of the response to Tenet Edit - didn't see your post before mine @Happenstance so a quick edit, but yeah Nolan's sound mixing sucks ass, idk how but it's got worse over the years

It's a weird one, because I see and understand the argument, but I can't say I'd agree. I think the system he utilises requires high skill and technicality, which simply isn't cheaply bought. I do think he would be capable of adapting to lesser teams - to the same extent as Mou dragging Porto and Inter to success, though? Or Fergie churning out several dynasties through the highs and lows at United? I'm not quite sure - because even when he buys these expensive players, not all of them end up working out in his system, but a lot of them come on leaps and bounds in unexpected ways so long as the hard work and dedication is there. Look at the rest of the league - heck, even just across Manchester - and it's obvious that buying power isn't necessarily staying power. Someone like that just seems destined to produce results so long as they have the full backing of the board, and I do also think Pep carries out extensive profiling of the leagues and teams he's being offered to take the reins of - it's just as much a case of him finding a board which trusts him and are willing to back him fully, as it is a case of him having access to unbelievable facilities, budgets, etc. I genuinely think the Barça board created this monster with how they essentially forced Pep into wanting to take time out of the game, and the seemingly unlimited funds of a team like City are all too happy to be invested in such a project. I think Pep could hypothetically be unhappy with Haaland in a year's time and the club would be happy to sell him on if it meant Pep stayed. He's also just a scholar of the sport, more so than any other manager I can think of today. It's clear he has a passion for its history, revisiting ideas from its past, and he's one of the few managers you hear about having met up with other managers, some of whom who aren't necessarily in that top echelon from all over the world for a dinner or a drink to discuss football, beyond just the typical post-game drinks; off the top of my head I can think of Tuchel, Bielsa, Wenger, and a few others, I think he even called Sacchi up at one point to discuss something he was having trouble with. I think the best analogy I can think of is comparing Pep to Christopher Nolan: while I would love to see Nolan make a budget $10 million indie film today, someone of that calibre in their field deserves the backing and freedom to produce films (teams/football philosophies) which pushes their profession and medium forward, and if that means getting backed to a silly degree, then so be it. They're once-in-a-generation talents at their particular role.

Nintendo won't be at Gamescom this year. Per VGC: Not too surprising given the context of previous reports that the console's launch got moved back to Q1 2025. I'm really curious to see when they decide to actually announce/reveal this thing, maybe even more so than I am to hear about its launch plans. I genuinely think if it doesn't launch until late Q1 (as in, March) similar to the Switch, they could get away with waiting until January, so as to not potentially hurt Christmas sales and cause confusion. The only real argument I can think against doing that would be potential leaks from the production line, but so long as they aren't stupid and pulling a Wii U and they don't get too gimmick-heavy, I think you could absolutely blast out a 2-3 month marketing campaign for this thing and have it over with. You could even tease an event for Jan with a console silhouette and a bit of a teaser trailer at The Game Awards if you really wanted to, I think you could get away with that much, because as big as that is for the gaming space, I don't feel like TGA news and a console silhouette would permeate through to the Switch demographic without the console before Christmas was over and done with. Nintendo basically turned water into wine with the marketing and release of the Switch last time around compared to how they and competitors had done it before, so yeah, I can't wait to see if they've got any of that sort of magic up their sleeve this time around

Launch trailer for the game's Steam Early Access launch, which begins this Thursday (18th): Just got to wait for that full release, but man, those visuals are insane

Now also rated in Australia... I'll be shocked if we don't have a date for this game by June at the very latest. Also wouldn't be shocked if it ended up being shadow-dropped.

Leverkusen winning their first Bundesliga with 5 games to spare (and up to this point being unbeaten) is unbelievable would be crazy if they managed to remain unbeaten for the last 5 games, and even more so if they win their other competitions with the same record. I love his style of football and what he's done for the sport/Prem, but I can't wait for that bald fraud to leave one day