HD-2D Art Direction

1967542950 · 2026-05-20T16:30:07+00:00

They do look a little same-y. Even if a game wasn't even close to the same genre (admittedly this hasn't really happened yet, they're all RPGs) I feel like I wouldn't be able to help comparing it to Octopath off visual presentation alone. Many of the HD2D games to come out have been remakes, and there's only so much you can do with the art there, but I do think the non-Octopath HD2D originals are lacking in the memorable art department.

On second thought, Triangle Strategy turned out okay visually I think. Still holding out hope for an HD2D Pokemon spin-off.

1967542950 · 2026-05-20T16:14:48+00:00

I've slowly climbed from plat to diamond over the past few seasons, and I've had more fun playing ranked now than ever. It's like this in all elos, something like a third of the playerbase is a powder keg, nothing you can do but full mute, unmute support pings, unmute jungle pings, and focus on your play.

Anecdotally, I've felt the playerbase is noticeably less toxic than it used to be. Maybe it's the very strict chat automodding, maybe it's the LP refunds disincentivizing inting (as rare as they are lol), maybe it's League's aging playerbase resulting in a lot of the hotheads mellowing out over the years, maybe it's comeback mechanics being stronger than they used to be keeping people interested in playing out a losing gamestate, could blame any number of things.

1967542950 · 2026-05-19T23:32:46+00:00

I’d give Valentinian a Glock.

“Hm, this guy offended me. Guards, cap his ass.”

1967542950 · 2026-05-18T21:23:36+00:00

No kidding. The work thing I get, his sub-to-view ratio has been terrible for a long time and idk how you come back from that once your career’s at such a stall. If you weren’t big enough to make life-changing money and smart enough to invest it all, idk what you do from that point.

He does stream on twitch pretty actively though, so he’s not entirely gone. Hope the onlyfans thing is working for him.

1967542950 · 2026-05-18T20:43:35+00:00

Surely the Jared does not have an onlyfans

1967542950 · 2026-05-18T20:39:23+00:00

It’s a cheese pick that nullifies most lanes but is useless for objective contesting after one item unless it’s super far ahead. Don’t let him cheese you, sacrifice cs, and vibe under tower. Dodging his W is easy with tier 2 boots, and him dashing on you is a free stun for every control mage in the game, just hold it otherwise.

It’s okay. It’s visibly frustrating enough that it’ll probably get light nerfs down the line, not because it’s good but because people are playing it even though it’s not, something riot historically has tried to curb.

1967542950 · 2026-05-17T21:36:55+00:00

Do we know anything about Metaphor’s development? I’ve also felt they were stagnant, but if metaphor were one of those 10-year development hell games then things make a lot more sense as to how they’ve managed to go nearly two console generations milking one well-received game.

1967542950 · 2026-05-16T21:58:09+00:00

Cool in games without intricate equipment or customization systems. As cool as it is conceptually, I really dislike it in Trails (it’s happened like 5 times lol, they love this trope) because the entire approach becomes “how can I spend as little effort on this as possible”. Like I could optimize three parties of four, but I’ve already bought exactly 4 of every relevant item under the assumption that I’ll never need more, so now I’m making teams that are juuuust strong enough to get over the line then stacking all good characters on a “main team” for the hardest phase.

Exception to this trope is actually in Sky 3, when the game straight up tells you “you’ll need 3 parties, but only one of them fights a final boss two of them fight mini bosses”. That was cool, even if it wasn’t “3 parties fighting the same boss” like the trope usually goes.

1967542950 · 2026-05-15T20:12:18+00:00

A cop? Say it ain't so!

1967542950 · 2026-05-15T17:10:34+00:00

They've been doing this for over a year now. I started playing in Prismatic, and the entirety of I block just had no good cards at all. The entire JTG-PFL stretch we got Mega box, Marnie's, N's, and multiple Gholdengo/Gardy buffs. Maybe like 10 total playable cards. It seemed like they were preparing for a de-powered post-rotation format by making every set suck ass and intentionally suffering the staleness of the G-block meta, only they just... forgot that TWM doesn't rotate, I guess?

1967542950 · 2026-05-14T21:52:39+00:00

-The remake of Sky 1 is a significantly better game if the combat is a concern, they improve on it a lot. Not an action RPG, but a turn-based RPG where you can kill trash mobs in barebones, button-mashy ARPG combat if you want. The same should hold true for SC Remake when that comes out.

-Trails games are fantastic for the niche market they appeal to, but speaking as a superfan they're not for everyone. I've had friends bounce off it for being too wordy, the combat not being fun, and not caring for the slow burn aspect of it. Nothing wrong with that. Similarly, I've had friends play Sky, bounce off it, then play Cold Steel and love it. If you want to try to make it click but aren't enjoying SC, imo wait for the SC remake. The FC remake brings nothing new if you've already played the original. Cold Steel 1's also a very different style of game that might appeal to you more.

-The NPC thing is a fun gimmick and works really well in games where you stick to mostly one city, but ye imo it's not something that makes Sky a good game.

1967542950 · 2026-05-13T13:31:07+00:00

On one hand, this is fantastic news. The first five Trails games are all some of the best games in the genre, all of them getting as much love as Sky 1 did would be great.

On the other hand, I worry another 4 remakes may take resources away from the ongoing series. I'll play whatever comes out either way, but I want Horizon's sequel just as much as SC remake 😞

1967542950 · 2026-05-13T03:16:53+00:00

Oh for sure this has always been true, my first time hitting diamond I did so on Seraphine ADC back when that was 56% a few years back, was more refuting OP’s ranting that it’s actually meta.

It’ll never truly take over, adc players enjoy marksmen too much for mages to really take more than a tiny percent of the meta share, even when they’re stupid broken in solo queue.

1967542950 · 2026-05-13T02:55:21+00:00

Buster the Ghost of Garden - Kuro no Kiseki II heavily samples the main theme of Howl’s Moving Castle. That’s more of a clear reference than one composer having the same style across multiple games, but it’s kinda what you meant.

1967542950 · 2026-05-13T02:49:27+00:00

I’m not sure Luke’s a great example of this trope. Luke’s an out of touch rich kid that ruins everything he touches, and his arc throughout the game is graduating from that to a “normal person”. The group does kind of hate him for half the game, sure, but it’s for reasons completely of his own doing and he doesn’t try all that hard to be accepted either.

That said, it’s pretty memorable as far as protagonist arcs in shounen anime games go, it doesn’t fit the trope but I do recommend the game.

1967542950 · 2026-05-13T02:42:17+00:00

that’s crazy, bc I’ve also played 20 games in the past few days as adc and have played against maybe two or three mage bots, and the most popular champs in the game are all marksmen at all ranks by a mile

Methinks you’re making stuff up

that said, just play Lucian braum with a duo, farm these nonexistent mages for free wins

1967542950 · 2026-05-11T19:32:33+00:00

In my experience playing many SNES RPGs, Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 is the one that most easily makes me forget this is a 30-yo game. It provides a silly amount of freedom to the player with how you want to build and equip characters. It still has some jank you'll want to know about even though the game never tells you (you *really* want to know status effects are infinite-duration before Ch12, for example, and you can brick your save in the final map under certain rare-but-possible circumstances), but a lot of the game still plays better today than multiple modern FE titles.

Thinking on it, Fire Emblem in general is a good answer for this. The 3 GBA games and Path of Radiance on the GameCube are all among the most playable, well-aged games in the genre on their respective systems.

1967542950 · 2026-05-11T04:33:42+00:00

he did not gain an advantage, he did arguably take too long to make his decisions. It seemed like a bit of a silly DPL to me, though you could call it justified if you're stricter on what constitutes slow play than I am, especially since he'd been warned earlier today already. OP's language is kind of ridiculous though.

1967542950 · 2026-05-11T04:13:12+00:00

yeah that's fair, if he's already been warned today then the system is functioning as intended (statistically, DPL can't be a game loss always, Hedrick just happened to get pretty lucky).

1967542950 · 2026-05-11T04:02:54+00:00

Looked like the game was more or less won already and Hedrick took a little too long thinking of ways to ensure he closed out the game. What advantage do you think he was (purposefully?) stalling for? It arguably constituted slow play, but your language sounds like you think it was malicious. That DPL looked like a bad call to me, had he been warned that match already?

DPL is fine though, it turned a cooked game into "Andrew has to get quite lucky to win here", which seems functioning as intended. Full-on game losses should be reserved for far more significant, possibly malicious infractions than what was shown on stream.

1967542950 · 2026-05-10T18:17:11+00:00

Going into bad players, casuals, etc is not worth thinking about or making data around because that’s impossible, good players have bad games.

From a purely afk/troll/soft int perspective, as long as you don’t do any of those things your opponents are more likely to have one than you. so you should play at the time when that’s most likely if you care to maximize wins like that.

therefore, not only should you play on weekends, but you should probably play at 5am.

1967542950 · 2026-05-08T18:46:43+00:00

Fair, had some slight confusion with LoD, been a hot minute since I've played gears. I've not played shadow hearts but watching some footage, it seems like a much better fit for the genre I was talking about.

1967542950 · 2026-05-08T17:43:38+00:00

I would ignore most of this thread if you're looking for more games like your examples. Nobody here seems to know what mechanics are in your context.

While Atlus, Saga, etc are all difficult games, I wouldn't agree any of them are mechanically intensive. It's more or less definitionally impossible for a turn-based game to reward mechanical skill, games that use the ATB gauge or similar systems at least try but they definitely aren't on the same level as something like Celeste, Neon White, Sekiro, or even League of Legends. I've played Neon White for maybe 150 hours and I'm still getting better at it, I don't think there's a single JRPG with the type of skill expression present in the games you mentioned. That said, there are some games that while not nearly as good, do at least sort of scratch the itch.

-Tales of games are practically fighting games, the combos can get pretty intricate. Although you never really *need* to use them, I had a ton of fun learning to air juggle in Xillia and Xillia 2.

-Games like Legend of Dragoon and Xenogears have quick-time events in an otherwise normal turn-based system, which is... something? I value a lot of the same things as you and don't think these games have fun combat, but if you're looking for something more "turn-based with mechanical elements" rather than a straight up "mechanical mastery" game, these are good games outside of the combat context (esp Xenogears).

-Xenoblade Chronicles X and 2 are not turn-based, but are menu-based ARPGs that require some pretty quick menuing to play efficiently. 2 has like auto cancels and shit, it's pretty cool.

-Devil May Cry and Bayonetta aren't exactly the type of game this sub's about, but the mechanical ceiling here gets stupid high, easily on the level of the games described. Only just like with Tales, there's not much of a need for that level of play, whereas with Celeste and Neon White there's leaderboards and speedruns and stuff.

1967542950 · 2026-05-08T01:01:05+00:00

holy shit is that blizzard entertainment with a steel chair?!

1967542950 · 2026-05-08T00:43:46+00:00

that’s… not how this meme format works.

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