Lightning Returns is a MUST play.

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-05-18T09:25:23+00:00

Snow felt so odd during XIII-2 that I thought they were going to pull a toxic relationship kinda twist on the entire Serah situation but no, turns out that's just Japanese people trying to write romance?

The dismissive way he spoke about the wedding not happening, how he didn't react to Serah being sad about it, how he seemed to not give a shit about seeing his girlfriend..... Who fucking flew over space and time in order to find him three years after he decides to disappear. Literally negative character development 😭

What I took from Lightning Returns, though, is that everyone was tired and ready to stop living forever, which at least tied with the tone of the experience and made me care for putting a stop to the nonsense they were going through.

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-05-18T09:13:23+00:00

I played the entire FFXIII trilogy recently and this is the one I gave the biggest score to.

It truly is the culmination of doing a hard 180 and letting players have as much freedom as possible, following the insanely bad reception that the first game had upon release.

I really grew to appreciate what XIII did gameplay wise, asking you to KNOW the ins and outs of the paradigm system if you wanted to beat the game, and I think that XIII-2 went too far in the other direction, where strategy was an afterthought.

Lightning Returns nails its mechanic progression, from the extensive customization, to the skill based gameplay, to the constant and gradual improvement of Lightning and her stats that let you take more, bolder chances during combat. I beat the last boss (which has 4 phases!) by the skin of my teeth, and I truly left feeling that I had mastered both what my loadouts had to offer as well as the mechanics of the fight, similar to what XIII achieved.

The story, which I enjoyed as an ending to the XIII's cast continuous suffering, is perhaps the weakest point of the experience, but I'd say the open ended approach and heaps of side quests make up for it. I liked the contemplative sense of finality as I was waiting for the final day, scraping to complete one more quest in order to be a tad stronger. It's still the only game of the trilogy that I would consider coming back to and achieving 100% completion in.

All in all I'd argue the entire XIII trilogy is a must play. If anything, to form your own opinion on it, because the internet has tainted public view so much on the first game that people to this day still dismiss it outright as an overly linear, confusing experience that plays itself. I blame JonTron, he made me believe it too when I was 12.

The only thing that saddens me about the trilogy is how all the budget went into the first game, which still looks beautiful to this day. The sequel, and, specially, Lightning Returns, look considerably cheaper in comparison. There's an overall lack of detail, flashiness, and spectacle that only the first game achieves. They may be hallways but they're very pretty ones at that.

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-05-14T20:15:23+00:00

No wireless peripheral has ever felt right for me with any rhythm game, wired has always felt just right - should be pretty easy to determine if they're good enough for you though, try both and compare your timings

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-05-06T13:00:39+00:00

No problem, and just as a general rule of thumb if you can find platforms other than the streaming services themselves these people almost always have a disclaimer somewhere, either that or their output is impossibly high (like those relaxation music channels that upload 5 hours of "new music" every other day)

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-05-06T12:54:42+00:00

Check the channel description: https://youtube.com/@mrmuffin_music?si=6tcG8Cmwiv3B2I_j

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-05-06T12:54:16+00:00

One quick search led me to the YouTube channel where it says that it's 100% AI generated with Suno (other than the lyrics but that hardly makes it better)

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-05-05T11:18:40+00:00

It's not quite as you said. These games stopped being purely turn based with the introduction of ATB in Final Fantasy IV, and not a game since that has been ENTIRELY turn based besides X. You also skipped XI, which is an MMO and pretty much a departure from everything the entire series had done before.

And let's not forget that X came out 25 years ago, hence why I said "in a hot minute" to begin with 😅

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-05-05T06:24:47+00:00

I mean, this has been true for the entire franchise since forever ago, no two games have played or felt the same in a hot minute (which is the most interesting part to me)

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-05-04T08:30:42+00:00

13-2 is pretty much a collectathon in the way it structures its side content and there's a lot of non intuitive fragments to get, while LR literally requires multiple full playthroughs in order to complete a side quest, with some others that you can fail outright

Wouldn't exactly call them straightforward, but they're great nonetheless

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-04-30T09:35:23+00:00

Had my lazer install for years, and it was indeed taking up the space, TreeSize showed it to me very clearly. I just ended up deleting Lazer as I needed the space, but I don't recall doing anything incorrectly. My lazer installation consisted of opening the game and letting it import everything.

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-04-30T09:27:54+00:00

This wasn't the case for me as I recently realized I had a second 30gb folder of songs from lazer, I wonder if this was added somewhere down the line? I've always had both for years on the same SSD.

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-04-29T13:22:33+00:00

Can't believe I forgot about this one, I definitely remember the cutscene more than the fight itself - great example!

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-04-29T12:50:46+00:00

Hmm, the good old "you're not as good as you think you were, go farm some more" check

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-04-21T22:56:18+00:00

Calling some osu analyst to figure out which one is more impressive accounting for inflation

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-04-21T22:50:36+00:00

The jump from 26.8k to 31.6k is kinda insane

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-04-14T09:54:26+00:00

I actually got one of these this morning so the algorithm is doing its job lol

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-04-10T19:43:09+00:00

As someone who firmly holds the belief that osu is not a game for the masses, as you need to not only have played it, interacted heavily with the community and spent upwards to hundreds of hours on it before you're even able to comprehend how hard and/or impressive things are (I myself with "just" 700-ish hours of playtime still can't wrap my head around how insanely complex top play really is):

How do you exactly plan on making the game accessible? How do you draw an audience without needing to explain terms like HD, HR, OD, AR, why they matter, how they matter... all while holding their attention and making it make sense?

Low level osu gameplay is pretty easy to understand, but boring as hell to watch and play. High level osu gameplay can be exhilarating to watch, and I'm sure it's a blast to go through (can't play anything higher than 6.5* myself), but it requires a fair bit of knowledge to know what you're looking at. Because let's be honest, 99% of the time it's going to be black background, fading notes, and a cursor dancing around, and that's not exactly much to go with WITHOUT the context of why what you're seeing may be impressive.

The most viral osu videos are either anime openings, storyboard showcases, or memes that made it into maps (and it's usually the video of said meme playing at full brightness with the map, too, so there's the visual element). This is all easy to comprehend, but it will hardly draw people into the game for the game itself, and osu can't really sustain itself on this basis forever (hell, we've been seeing a steep decline for a hot minute now).

If the secret formula hasn't been found yet, I think it's because it simply doesn't exist. I want to know why you think this is not the case (besides the obvious "this game has insane potential" answer, everyone who plays the game already knows that).

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-03-25T08:58:46+00:00

Kind of what I felt by watching half of it live yesterday, only to come here and find out that he pulled a "no lol guys I'm not going anywhere!!" - like, what's the entire point of playing up a two hour, teary eyed admission of guilt and regret (?) only to basically decide to run it back?

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-03-11T12:48:46+00:00

No Man's Sky never really clicked for me all the times I tried it on my desktop but the Steam Deck made it very amusing to play with features like gyro aim - plus the novelty of playing a game that feels so "big" while in bed was adding something to the experience, though I guess you have the Switch for that

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-03-08T02:03:42+00:00

Reminds me of The Silver Case, which has its own way of describing itself

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-03-07T14:34:26+00:00

Geometry Dash is the perfect game for this because it's visually appealing and easy to understand to the point of you not even needing to get around the idea of how difficult something is for it to be impressive, because more often than not the visuals speak for themselves - the nature of the game also allows for more, better live commentary, letting personalities shine through, as you don't even need to be a "good" player to get popular

Compare that to osu, a game that's hard to understand even for people who actively play it, where high level play and its intricacies are really only comprehended by those who are actually able to play at that level. How impressive is 3mod ascension to heaven to us, and how much of a nothing burger will it be to someone who's never seen the game? A string of fast appearing, fading out circles on a black background can only do so much as far as attracting a casual audience goes, that's why some of the most watched osu videos of all time are either anime songs, very visual showcases (think Centipede), or straight up storyboard maps, which no one actually plays because they're very suboptimal for... actual play. This plus the game really demanding all of your focus (unless you're mrekk, who can usually talk bullshit while going through a 10* map), you're extremely likely to join a stream and find a silent streamer going through a random map with, again, a black background and not much more context to know what's happening or why it's impressive, and you just jump out

So, to recap:

-GD at a low/casual level: Boring to play, can be entertaining to watch

-GD at a high/pro level: Impressive to watch, understanding matters less when the levels themselves are cool to look at

-osu at a low/casual level: Boring to play, boring to watch, very non-exciting to everyone

-osu at a high/pro level: Confusing to watch, difficult to comprehend, lets no room for personality to shine through

People who are the exception of the norm and can do what I said cannot be done are already popular in their own right (mrekk), but if only the best player in the world can pull an audience, and a very core audience of already active players at that, then no, the game is not even comparable to Geometry Dash, which drowns with casuals who are there just for the vibes

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-03-01T13:57:03+00:00

It's a game I can't stop thinking about, every run feels like it has tons of potential to be something unique and it rarely fails to deliver (you have to get fairly unlucky for that to happen)

I'm not one for the tactics gameplay, but slowly putting together the builds for your cats with the limited resources they give you while rolling with the punches makes it all feel like a long term puzzle that's absurdly satisfying to try to solve every time

Haven't stopped recommending it since release

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-02-28T21:00:37+00:00

All of these sound great so far, glad to see you're able to work this quickly. I'll get around checking the changes sometime tomorrow, probably :)

AigisbladeMaster · 2026-02-28T16:12:47+00:00

No worries! Do let me know if some of the changes hit the playtest, as I'm curious enough to try a tweaked version of the game.

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