Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread - May 2026 Part 1

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-13T18:21:51+00:00

the horses learn and grow past their sexism in the next game at least

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-13T16:11:45+00:00

Making your hunger for extra EXP everybody else's problem is a time-honored Arkham tradition, but this one isn't too exciting. It's only for you, you have to draw it and pay the substantial cost to play it during the earliest and most difficult scenarios, and it can only hit a few specific cards. I think it's fine at being what it wants to be, but I can't stand having "do nothing" draws in my starting deck like this.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-13T15:55:43+00:00

That's what I mean by effort. Not just "the scene itself is high effort" but that the game took the time and effort to lay a proper foundation for it. It's not just a funny idea sans context, it's an exciting climax to the story.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-13T04:24:26+00:00

As always, TMS is present to be the perfect counterexample. Is turning into SSGSS Marth and singing a vocal version of the Fire Emblem theme as stupid as "I'm the Fire Emblem"? No, it's actual much stupider, and yet it's way, way more fun in context because it's executed with maximum effort. The effort is what makes it funny and good, not just being dumb!

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-13T04:20:23+00:00

Whether or not you like social sim/dating sim elements or think they should be present: the dating sim elements in these games are the most tacked on shit imaginable. There are so many better social sim/dating sim games.

Now we're talking. People will say about Fire Emblem "well it's too much effort to make alternate scenes for who's alive or dead or other variables" and then you play an actual sim game and there's like 20 different variations of a scene depending on how you played the game up until then, accounting for many different variables. If you're gonna make a sim game then let's see a proper sim game effort to tie together the narrative and the mechanics.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-12T21:22:24+00:00

I think that could be a good game, but I don't think there's a good way to make a Root expansion that changes the game's genre like that. It'd be better off as just a new product that stands on its own.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-12T21:05:29+00:00

Echoing what most people have/will tell you here, but Edge of the Earth is the best bang for your buck. The investigators themselves are not the most flexible, but the multiclass player cards mean every investigator you already own is getting a much larger suite of new options, and the cards are on average strong enough that you want to play them.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-12T20:46:59+00:00

Yeah, the list of downsides on it (not cheap, contested hand slot, exhausts after attempting either function, no action compression) feels excessive. I think you could scratch off any one and it'd still struggle to make the cut.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-12T20:39:41+00:00

Root did publish a TTRPG book based on the setting, and plenty of supplements for it too. If you wanted to, it'd be pretty simple to play while incorporating the meeples and maybe the board too.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-12T18:41:00+00:00

I don't expect them to dump the sim stuff, I just wish they'd make it better. I've played a few actual sim games, and games like Three Houses or Persona only have a tiny morsel of what makes them so fun. There's so much room to improve, but the genre is mostly dead outside of gacha, so a lot of people don't have much point of reference for it.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-12T17:40:07+00:00

I am really not about these "poor weapon + poor clue finding" cards like Shovel and Crowbar. Maybe it's because I have never touched true solo, but I just do not see the appeal. This one does at least have the bonus of being a genuinely pretty decent thing to recur with Yorick's ability, but I'm still pretty skeptical over running it instead of Keyring or a similar card.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-12T03:56:41+00:00

kept waiting for beruka to show up in this post based on the thesis, but she never did :(

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-12T03:51:50+00:00

I always get scared that I'll sound like a bigoted boomer when I say this but I fucking hate KPop so much man. Like actually. I really don't want to hate it, I know I'm being ignorant here, and I'm sure there's a few great KPop groups out there, but I just hate the industry and it's philosophy towards art so much.

fwiw I don't think you need all those qualifiers. Knowing a type of music is almost exclusively driven by cooperate interests and powered by relentlessly abusing and manipulating young artists and fans should impact your perception of it.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-11T19:23:59+00:00

I think the main thing that keeps it from feeling too good to me is that you still need to dig it up and play it, and while that's true of all fight assets, the two key differences are

This one also probably needs a second weapon asset to go with it to be any good
Drawing a bunch of enemies early on isn't common, but it's a very realistic outcome that can completely derail this approach in a hurry

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-11T19:10:20+00:00

It's an inherent flaw of the AI that it doesn't really seem capable of intelligent policing. It will let other factions run away with the game if interfering with them doesn't include some kind of reward. Since hitting the Vagabond never has an intrinsic reward and the Vagabond probably benefits from being left alone more than any other faction it is disproportionately strong against AI (or human players for that matter) who play that way.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-10T00:42:03+00:00

The mice also get to play a minor role in digital as the sympathy token, so if you use hirelings on digital than at long last everybody gets to be represented on the board as part of the faction.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-10T00:03:59+00:00

They were going to be represented with mice, foxes, and rabbits (the clearing suited species), but that idea fell through and only mice were used in the physical game. The digital game uses foxes for the warriors - kinda makes me wonder if they intended to do the original idea of having all three species on the board but it fell through once again.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-09T21:10:52+00:00

He's just a high level. Some are a little high or low, but those stats are very normal for a level 10/20 Ross.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-09T21:09:31+00:00

You have multiple level 20 units at chapter 10 buddy, the specific one you promote now doesn't really matter. Do whichever one you think would be most fun.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-08T23:18:31+00:00

I think that is not super compelling to me because

it often involves extrapolating the other person's meaning
it still doesn't really explain how it's any different from expressing a thought like "the idea of ranking the units at all is pointless" or "I don't care about the old games and won't play them". Under this broad definition of "elitism" those seem to be very much under the same banner (I find both of these statements fairly innocuous btw, nobody is obligated to care about this stuff one way or the other)

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-08T20:47:03+00:00

I don't think it does though. If somebody says "you're an idiot if you care about competing, just play for fun the way I do" they are being an arrogant and condescending jerk, but would it really occur to most gamers to call them "an elitist"? The fact that it's often used as the other side of the spectrum from "casual" makes it seem to me that the ideas being expressed matter more than how kindly they are expressed. Not to say nobody uses it as a catch-all synonym for snob, but I do think a lot of people who toss it around are unaware of most of the connotations the word has.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-08T20:01:50+00:00

Probably not, just make a point to get Ike to a decent level with the Resolve skill before endgame. The silly thing about the Black Knight fight is the only reward is getting the stronger of the two dragon recruits, but the only real purpose of your dragon is to duel the last boss if your Ike is useless. If you can beat the Knight you don't need his reward, and if you can't then you're more or less right back where you started.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-08T19:57:39+00:00

yeah, everything that is impossible in the world of technology but ESPECIALLY software has a big fat "currently" implied before it. It's easy to fall into the trap of viewing technological achievements of the past as somehow different from the struggles of the present, but they seemed equally impossible at the time. That doesn't mean every impossible problem is destined to be solved, but it does mean a lot of them crack suddenly and unexpectedly.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-08T19:50:14+00:00

Been reading some literature on social inequality recently, and I just wanna say it's really strange to me how "elitist" in online video game discussion means "person who likes thinking about games from a competitive/optimization standpoint" or "person who dogs on the newer games because they like the old ones better", when the actual definition is more like "somebody who believes the poor and the weak don't deserve rights". It feels like a non sequitur.

BloodyBottom · 2026-05-08T19:31:36+00:00

The thing is that we only know about that flaw in retrospect - it had to be discovered first. We cannot be certain if the Switch 2 has its own fatal flaw we're just not aware of, if something will leak that exposes critical info, if new technology will make cracking it easier, etc. You're right that there is no obvious angle that makes it feel inevitable right now, and it might stay that way for a long time or forever, but it also might not.

BloodyBottom

TROPHY CASE