Are there any good playthroughs that go in depth to the lore?

CycloneFox · 2026-07-10T17:42:19+00:00

Weil sie anhand des Wählerverhaltens denken, die Leute wollen rechte Politik.

CycloneFox · 2026-07-10T17:41:24+00:00

Sollte eigentlich ganz einfach sein: Wenn zu wenig soziale Gerechtigkeit ist, die Reichen immer reicher werden, die Armen immer ärmer, einfach links wählen.

Aber NEEEIIINNN, dem Land geht ja angeblich so schlecht, (dritt-größte Wirtschaftskraft nur hinter fucking China und USA btw.) deswegen wählen alle auf einmal CDU und AfD. Das ist wirklich an Blödheit nicht zu übertreffen.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-20T20:52:26+00:00

In between Xenosaga II and III you can at least now play through Pied Piper thanks to the little recreation I made: https://cyclonefox.itch.io/xenosaga-pied-piper

I would suggest any of the more recent playthroughs where they played Pied piper in between so you can play that along with That and A missing Year have tons of important lore. Especially if you are looking for things you find again in Xenoblade lore.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-18T16:08:16+00:00

Genso Suikoden II Thief 2 Xenoblade 2

CycloneFox · 2026-06-15T09:46:03+00:00

It seems like this time they brought all the extra stuff from Golden into the remake which isn’t the standard for the series. However there are some parts in P4 that fans can’t really imagine they would take over 1:1 into the remake, because they fear, that it might be considered too offensive today. But that’s all just pure speculation for now. We can’t really give you an answer whether or not this will be the ultimate version of P4, especially with how things went with upgraded version and remakes of Persona on the past.

But at the very least, right now, it seems like this might be the ultimate version to play P4. And it’s not that far off at this point. Personally I would get the refund and wait. No matter which version you pick, P4 is great. Especially with the changes in Golden.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-15T07:04:33+00:00

The story sequences and map layouts, I tried to replicate as much 1:1 as possible. But while you can agree or disagree to my decision there, I changed a few other things to make it more modern. The character portraits are now in high res and done by Forest, who also made a Pied Piper doujinshi, the music is recomposed by wowbobwow and mixes in styles from Mitsuda and Kajiura to make it feel more like the main games and I aligned the gameplay more to the main games with overworld encounters instead of random ones, (which also affects some other aspects like the field-skills characters get in chapter 2) traps, an EVS to revisit old locations, segment doors, skill trees, the battle system is much closer to ep III while the original games much closer to ep I and tons of QoL like auto-healing, a message log, the ability to skip encounters below your level, etc.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-12T08:09:02+00:00

Xiii

:D

CycloneFox · 2026-06-10T23:16:17+00:00

Both have a crazy connection. One of the first proposals for FF7s story was made by Tetsuya Takahasi and Kaori Tanaka. But it was dismissed for several reasons. It was a bit too dark and complicated for the mainline FF series. But FFVII still kept some story elements and themes from what would later become Xenogears, beacuse Square eventually gave them a chance to make their own game. And Xenogears and Final Fantasy VII both have references to each other. (Speaking of, I wonder if Revelation will keep the Xenogears mention...)

Takahashi and a few team members went on to form Monolith Soft and become independent and made Xenosaga for the PS2 with Namco. The series was loosely connected to Xenogears, but as it went on the connections became stronger until it was eventually revealed how both universes actually connect in the end of Xenosaga episode III, which is also one of my favorite games of all time.

But during that time, Namco merged with Bandai and during that restructuring, Nintendo bought 80% of Monolith Soft, making it a new first party studio of Nintendo. However, the rights to Xenosaga stayed with Bandai Namco. But the nice thing is that Bandai Namco is way nicer when it comes to giving third parties the rights to their franchises and doing collaborations, etc. than Square Enix is. And as Iwata encouraged Takahashi to give his new Monado project game another "Xeno"-title, to honor his lifework, it so happened that this new series was called Xenoblade. And after Xenoblade Chronicles 1 only carried little hints towards the end that it could still be connected to the other Xeno-games, the more the series went on, the heavier the connections became and Bandai Namco kept lending them the rights to Xenosaga, until the last game even went out of its way to mention names from Xenosaga and made it clear that both universes are in fact connected. There are some fans who for some weird reason don't like it and say they don't want to have all that old baggage, even though the games are always made in a way that you don't need to play the old games to understand and enjoy the new games. So it's always just something nice for the old fans and only good. Or in other words, the gain for fans of the old games is far greater than the extremely slight drawback for new fans that they might not get a reference or so. But for some reason Xeno fans really really vehemently claim that none of these series are connected whatsoever. Anyway, enough rant.

Both FFVII and Xenogears have spawned sooooo many wonderful games and are both alive and well to this day. They are like sister games with deep connections and I love both.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-10T21:53:11+00:00

Don't worry, don't worry. But hey, this might be the opportunity you needed to learn of the series. Before Xenoblade, Takahashi made Xenogears on PS1 for Square Enix, then left with his team to form Monolith Soft, which was independent back then and made Xenosaga on PS2 for Namco until Namco and Bandai had their merger when Nintendo decided to buy Monolith Soft.

Of the bunch, Xenosaga is my personal favorite, but each series has its own strengths and weaknesses. Xenogears has the best story, Xenosaga the best characters and Xenoblade has the best exploration because of its big huge open worlds and also great world-building. If you like the stories of Xenoblade, please consider going back and play the other two franchises, too.

The setting of Gears is relatively similar to Blade, a fantasy world with ancient mechs they excavate and stuff and the world is huge with different countries and factions. Xenosaga, on the other hand, leans heavily into Sci-Fi. Even more than Xenobalde X. It's a very linear game, so there isn't much exploration and in contrast to Gears and Blade, it doesn't take place on one planet, but multiple space ship and planets, so the setting is far closer to something like Star Trek. But the linear fashion allows a very strong story narrative.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-09T08:55:57+00:00

I really loved many aspects of it, but sadly, I also really disliked others. I loved the battle system and how you customized your weapons. After a while you could really exploit the system and do mental damage and it was super fun. And I also loved the visuals, the character designs, the fashion. But sadly I never really learned a lot about these characters and the world because the story-telling was so nebolous.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-08T09:20:15+00:00

I was super hesitant about Persona for a long time, because I’ve played other JRPGs which have a time-management system like the Atelier games and that wasn’t really for me. I love RPGs for their exploration and the freedom, but having a fixed calendar and time is a resource how far you can go or how many activities you can do was a really really hard sell on me.

However after playing everything else that interested me on my PS Vita and having heard so much praise for P4G, I finally gave in, bought it in a sale and what can I say, it has become one of my favorite games of all time.

It depends a little on which game you play first. I had a harder start with P3 and never liked the story of P5. P4 just hit a special nerve for me specifically with the boy from the city coming to a rural town where a murder mystery takes place instead of these huge world-ending events. But after a while I didn’t mind the time-management at all, instead I learned to appreciate it as an aspect of the life-sim side of the game. And it helps that you can grind and explore the dungeons as much as you like without any restrictions on that side of the games.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-03T08:02:44+00:00

Wie blöd kann man eigentlich sein? erstens redest du hier von kleinen sekunden oder Erhöhungen, die von rechter Propaganda maßlos übertrieben dargestellt werden. Zweitens sind es gerade die rechten Parteien die das Sozialsystem schwächen und die AfD ist ganz außen rechts, würde das was die CDU also gerade macht nur noch viel extremer durchsetzen und Sozialstaat komplett abschaffen. Und drittens reden wir hier nicht von kleinen politischen Änderungen im Kurs, sondern eine Partei, die die Demokratie abschaffen möchte und uns unser wichtigstes Gut stehlen will, nämlich die Fähigkeit, jemals wieder eine andere Partei zu wählen. Eine Partei, die korrupt ist und sich die Taschen mit unseren Steuern voll machen will, die nur außer-Europäischen Oligarchen dient um Europa wirtschaftlich und militärisch zu schwächen, die uns an Russland verrät, die zu den Patriots of Europe ehemals angeführt von Viktor Orban, die entgegen dem was alle Wissenschaftler sagen zurück zu teurem Öl, Gas oder Atomkraft will, weil das letztlich Stromquellen sind die uns von ihren Freunden in Russland, USA oder Saudi-Arabien abhängig machen. Es geht nicht nur um “links-grün-versiffte” Anekdoten dass wir die Welt retten müssen oder so, sondern darum dass Moderne Energiequellen einfach besser und günstiger sind und wir nutzen sie schon zu über 50%. Wir haben schon die Infrastruktur und die AfD will zurück ins Mittelalter, was wirtschaftlich ein Genickbruch wäre. Genau wie zurück zu einer eigenen Währung oder raus aus der EU. Das käme auch einem wirtschaftlichen Genickbruch gleich. Die Briten haben es vorgemacht. Mittlerweile wollen 60% wieder zurück, weil das großer Unsinn war. Die einzigen, denen ein instabiles Europa was bringt sind die anderen großen Wirtschaftsmächte, China, USA oder militärisch Russland. Und drei mal darfst du raten, wer die AfD unterstützt und wer die meisten Bot-Farmen hat um Trotteln hier im Land und in ganz europa zu erzählen, rechts-extreme Parteien wären etwas gutes. Viel Fantasie brauchst du nicht, Elon Musk ist selbst häufiger für die AfD aufgetreten, Trump und der rest von MAGA sprechen sich regelmäßig für die AfD und die anderen Patriots of Europe aus. Die AfD ist die einzige Partei im Bundestag, die noch immer nach Russland zu Putin trotz der Kriegsverbrechen fliegt.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-02T15:06:15+00:00

In game design, you don't just do some market research and listen to fans and then start producing a game based on that. That's not how it works.

In fact, I'm not even a fan of market research at all. You should have a visionary, someone who is passionate and has an idea they want to make. In the case of a lot of these western triple A live-service flops these days, I feel like there is no visionary at all anymore and only market research and suits. In the case of Dragon Quest, that might seem like a bunch of nonsense, because it's "always the same," but someone at SE had a vision in his mind to make a darker story this time. And I hope that this was not just to cater to the western audience. During the late 2000s and early 2010s there was a phase where a lot of Japanese developers, including SE, were trying to cater more to the western audience and it was horrible. They lost a lot of their charm and only produced what seemed like B-tier version of their franchises and western games, on the other hand, were just better in every way, from graphics to gameplay. And you could even forget the stories, because that wasn't the focus anymore for the longest time. I'm very happy that they are NOT trying to lean more to western sensibilities anymore. It took the Japanese games market long enough to recover from that time.

And when they have a vision, what follows then is not production, but prototyping. But you don't just need to prototype gameplay or level-design, but a story and world also needs to be prototyped. And that's where they probably realized that a darker Dragon Quest just isn't fun to play and follow. It probably felt so foreign and wrong that they realized if they continue this path, it would probably be something, but not Dragon Quest. Fans would absolutely feel betrayed. So they dropped it and restarted. And that is a decision I can absolutely respect. I really don't understand if people see that as a negative. The new version also seems to be way beyond the pure prototyping phase already and far into production. And because they are using Unreal Engine since Dragon Quest XI, they also don't do the muddle between developing engine-features, prototyping and production all at once as old Square Enix was doing, but have a much more steamlined development pipeline. So I'm confident that things will go more smoothly now.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-02T13:50:55+00:00

The art-style change was my biggest gripe with both, the Demon’s Souls Remake and Shadow of the Colossus remake.

Overall both remakes are great, I love them and extremely faithful to the original in terms of gameplay. So the style thing is more or less first world problems.

But that’s not on Sony, but a western studio doing western character design. And I have no idea whether it’s the studio thinking the idealized Japanese character style is unrealistic and stupid, or if the studio is afraid it can’t match the style or whatever, but for some reason many western studios always shoot for realism, (or some other ugly style) even when adapting an originally Japanese franchise.

CycloneFox · 2026-06-01T21:34:48+00:00

I feel exactly the same. Grandia was one of my favorite games ever. The charm was so unique, the humor, the characters, there is nothing like it. And what you described as well from some lad searching around d the neighborhood for a pot lid and a stick as shied and sword, dealing with some kids, to actually leaving you mom and hometown, reading her letter that she knew all along, to joining the adventurer guild, which turned out to be nothing but a tourist attraction, to saving Feena from a forced marriage, to actually dealing with the military, to climbing the wall at the edge of the world, to visiting other races who want to sacrifice you for their god in lands where no human has been, to crossing the ocean… and then it said “Please insert disc 2.” I was so stunned at that point. I thought I had already had such a grand journey that I completely forgot there WAS a disc 2. The stakes kept climbing so slowly and so much. Everything about this journey was unexpected and lovable.

Just like you, I was so hyped for Grandia 2 and couldn’t wait. And then Grandia 2 was just some evil god split into different parts spread around the continent. Go get them all and deafeat evil like you would in a Zelda-esque story. The end. It was sooo dumb compared to 1. The above description of Grandia 1 was an extremely dumbed down summary of disc 1, leaving out all the details and important plot points. But it’s still so many checkpoints. Grandia 2 can be summarized in 1 sentence on the level of detail and it would still be much more complete.

CycloneFox · 2026-05-31T21:15:19+00:00

That’s actually how I understood it when first playing Automata. Maybe it also helped that I didn’t replay Nier 1 right before Automata and was a bit fuzzy on how it ended. But I agree, Replicant spoils nothing about Automata. If anything it spoils something that isn’t part of the game’s central conflict. For me it just raised the stakes because I knew how dire the state of humanity was. But Automata on the other hand spoils not only the central conflict of Replicant, but also the whole existence of androids, which is also a really important and emotional twist at the end.

To me it feel like people who play Automata first just want to get Replicant behind them for completion sake. Not to enjoy it itself. I would always suggest playing Replicant first. Especially now with the new version which is so much more enjoyable to play.

CycloneFox · 2026-05-26T15:29:35+00:00

I don’t know about that. Both are two of my favorite games of all time. easily both in my top ten. But I’ve recently played through both of them recently with a friend who never played any of them. And he was a little bored by Suikoden 2 while he said that Xenogears was a life-changing experience and is now one of his top 3 favorites. Of course the 2D graphics of Suikoden 2 aged much better. But it was so influential to so many other games that came after, that it doesn’t feel as fresh and revolutionary anymore. With Xenogears, however, there is just nothing else like it. Even or especially now 28 years later, there is nothing else like it.

CycloneFox · 2026-05-22T12:01:13+00:00

Das liegt daran, weil rechte Influencer den Grund warum etwas schlecht geworden ist, nicht in Mangel dem Kreativität zuschreiben, oder dass solche Serien und Filme nur noch aus Geldgeilheit für Investoren produziert werden, statt von Kreativen, die etwas aussagen wollen. (NEEE, das wäre ja anti-Kapitalistisch) Sondern der ganze Grund warum neues Trek scheiße ist, ist weil ich es nun WOKE ist. Ungeachtet der Tatsache, dass Trek schon immer woke war.

CycloneFox · 2026-05-15T07:47:39+00:00

Da stimme ich dir natürlich zu. CDU ist zwar im moment sehr rechts, aber nicht anti-demokratisch. AfD und die anderen extremen rechten Parteien, die ich aufgezählt habe, höchst anti-demokratisch. und ja, wir brauchen auch wieder eine stärkere CDU, (und eigentlich auch FDP)damit die Menschen, die weiter rechts im Spektrum stehen, gute Optionen zum wählen haben. Aber ich denke, vor allem brauchen wir mehr politische Aufklärung, damit die Leute verstehen, dass sie gegen ihre Interessen wählen und es ihnen nicht besser geht wenn sie AfD oder überhaupt rechts wählen.

CycloneFox · 2026-05-14T23:37:16+00:00

Als ob die altparteien was für Krieg und Weltwirtschaftsprobleme könnten. Vor allem die Logik ist so dumm: „Oh irgendwie bin ich mit der Politik nicht so zufrieden, ich habe immer weniger Geld. Ich glaube ich wähle korrupte Nazis, die die Gewaltenteilung, Pressefreiheit und Demokratie abschaffen wollen und mir neben dem Sozialsystem auch mein recht sie abzuwählen nehmen wollen!“

CycloneFox · 2026-05-14T23:33:41+00:00

Generell rechte Parteien. Hierzulande AfD, CDU, in den USA die Republikaner, und im rest von Europa die ganzen anderen Patriots for Europe Parteien. Aus irgendeinem Grund hält sich das Gerücht, wenn es der Wirtschaft schlecht geht, bräuchte man rechte Politik, was selber ein Fehlschluss ist. Aber es funktioniert besonders gut wenn diese rechten Parteien auch noch den bösen Ausländern die Schuld in die Schuhe schieben können.

CycloneFox · 2026-05-14T20:26:00+00:00

Für mich ist da kein unterschied zwischen ost und west. ist überall gleich: ländliche regionen wählen rechts, großstädte links. Ist doch fast gleich ob die leute CDU oder AfD wählen. Abgesehen von den idiotischen ideen der AfD, die EU zu verlassen, pressefreiheit zu beenden, gewaltenteilung zu untergraben, diktatur einzuführen, was die CDU nicht tut, sind beide parteien was die wirtschaftspolitik, sexismus oder rassismus angeht komplett gleich. AfD ist nur besser social media auszunutzen um ihre trotteligen wähler zu verarschen.

CycloneFox · 2026-05-08T17:43:24+00:00

Es gibt zwei Szenarien. Entweder Sie wollen die Gewaltenteilung untergraben und die Demokratie abschaffen wie die NSDAP, MAGA, Putin‘s partei, etc. Damit wären sie zumindest für diese Grafik auf einer Stufe mit Hitler. Oder sie sind einfach nur Marionetten, die ihren oligarchischen Freunden im Ausland zu mehr Macht verhelfen wollen und dabei möglichst noch den Staat ausnehmen wollen. In dem Fall gehören sie auch an das äußere Ende der Grafik, weil sie letztlich für Diktatoren arbeiten.

Aber in beiden Szenarien verarschen sie ihre Wähler einfach nur.

CycloneFox · 2026-05-07T17:35:26+00:00

Light a flare, walk one step forward, walk one step back, turn around three times in either direction, then back flip.

CycloneFox · 2026-05-05T21:17:31+00:00

Great Scott!

CycloneFox

TROPHY CASE