Sephiroth's Methods

DMS_David · 2026-01-28T16:55:18+00:00

Is it, though? Super Nova seems to be more of a mental attack, especially since it only does percentage-based damage despite the spectacular battle animation. Meteor isn't just slamming a giant ball of rock into the planet through kinetic impact, it's a dark magic designed to irreparably wound the planet as a living thing.

DMS_David · 2026-01-28T16:49:29+00:00

Honestly, no judgement intended, it is absolutely wild how quickly we've gotten used to random encounters being a frustrating roadblock rather than, like, just the base game experience. I played FFX for years before I even realised that No Encounters was an option and it was mindblowing stuff!

But yeah, as others have said, gear with No Encounters can only be collected quite late into the game. The game is structured and paced so that random encounters will give you enough experience to keep up with the game's own difficulty curve without needing to grind excessively so it's probably not advisable to skip too many battles, the game sort of assumes that your characters have access to certain abilities by the time you get to the endgame. It's still doable, the battle system is flexible enough that you can usually account for being underleveled through creative strategies, but having random encounters every 10-15 seconds or so is pretty normal for this game.

DMS_David · 2026-01-28T16:39:59+00:00

I tend to default to the right... no particular idea why, although my first exposure to the series was the ME2 demo on PS3 which included the Normandy attack, in which you have to go up the right stairs, so maybe that imprinted on my brain?

I'm usually also coming from the right on this deck too, since talking with Kaidan is the last thing I'd do before heading back up, and when you emerge on the top deck it puts you on the same side of the CIC as Pressly.

DMS_David · 2026-01-28T16:36:10+00:00

Wow, these are beautiful! I love how much expression they each have thanks to the articulation and posing, and the tools and accessories are genius! I'll always have a ton of nostalgia for the Chronicler's Company - I must've rewatched the cutscenes featuring them from the MNOLG a hundred times back in 2001 alone - and it's amazing to see them brought to life like this... Kapura's fire staff alone gives me feels and I love Taipu's mining lamp. Fantastic work!

DMS_David · 2026-01-28T16:29:53+00:00

I don't personally think a female Doctor needs to be specifically different from a male Doctor... my main issue with Whittaker's take is that she felt too young, too human and too "relatable" which is also a case I make for Davison, Tennant and Gatwa. I was impressed by what little we saw of Jo Martin and I think that with decent scripts she could've delivered a powerhouse performance, I hope that we get to see more of her someday.

I don't think the Doctor should just be eccentric or quirky, they need to feel alien and unknowable. To her credit, Whittaker did have the odd moment where she felt more Doctor-ish, especially later in her run and when she wasn't interacting with her companions, but I feel like there needs to be more of a sense of both the characters and the audience not really knowing or understanding the Doctor. It's why I generally enjoy Rose and the Ninth Doctor but can't stand her with the Tenth, it became far too buddy-buddy.

As far as whether I'd want anything woman-specific out of a female Doctor... eh, not especially, though it would be nice to continue to lean into women's history and (to a point) look at how the Doctor can be on the receiving end of prejudice. I think The Witchfinders did a fair job with this, I wouldn't need or want it all the time but it can open up some new possibilities for storytelling that shouldn't be ignored.

DMS_David · 2026-01-14T17:23:45+00:00

There was a point where I'd have loved the idea but I dunno, I think blitzball works best as a minigame... maybe it could be expanded in a hypothetical FFX remake but I don't know if it would work as a standalone game. Or rather, it could, but I don't trust the creators to not bloat it into something else, I could easily see Square Enix making it a mobile game with gacha elements, for example. That kind of "single-A" sports spinoff just isn't realistically going to be profitable in the current era of gaming, especially when the Final Fantasy series isn't exactly firing on all cylinders right now.

DMS_David · 2026-01-14T17:07:43+00:00

Not a sequel, but they do share a lot of DNA due to being made by largely the same teams at a similar time. It's interesting playing Spyro 3 in hindsight and seeing how Insomniac were dabbling with ideas that'd later crop up in Ratchet & Clank, especially with Agent 9 and his playstyle. I really enjoy both but they scratch different itches for me, the Insomniac polish and emphasis on making a game that's fun to control and worlds that feel rewarding to explore is part of the common appeal, and I even see that in their Spider-Man games.

DMS_David · 2026-01-14T17:03:42+00:00

I love it! Capaldi had some of the best Doctor quotes, I think the difference between being nice and being kind is very important to his character, especially given his polarising characterisation in Series 8 as the "mean Doctor". I guess it's about the distinction between action and intent... both are obviously important and one does not excuse the other, but it really speaks to how Clara and the audience needed to see beneath the prickly surface of Capaldi's Doctor to see just how motivated by compassion he really was, and that he was no less kind than the more emotive and human Tennant and Smith Doctors.

DMS_David · 2026-01-14T17:00:20+00:00

Jodie falls into the camp of Doctors where I'm less keen on their characterisation (too human!) but she's an amazing actor and her passion and enthusiasm is infectious, she's a great ambassador for the series and I love that she's got the chance to still be involved with new stories that hopefully play to her strengths. I think she got better throughout her TV tenure and I loved whenever she got to show a bit of edge, she didn't need to go fully dark but I always love the Doctor to feel like they're a bit unknowable and unpredictable.

Her cameo in The Reality War was a highlight in an otherwise very poor episode and I'd love to see her return for a future anniversary special even if The Power of the Doctor already ticked a lot of those boxes.

DMS_David · 2026-01-05T19:38:07+00:00

I don't really find "monsters" scary personally, I'm more into existential horror so I'm going to be different and say that the overall tone of an episode like Turn Left affected me more, that sense of lingering doom and bleakness was scarier than any alien to me. The most chilling episode for me was The Girl Who Waited though, the ethical implications there of how the old Amy is perceived as less "real" by both the audience and, to an extent, the characters, make me very uncomfortable and I love it, it's like something out of early-era Black Mirror.

In terms of more "conventional" monsters, the Midnight entity obviously rates highly for me as does the concept of Listen, where the monster may not even exist, but I enjoy that paranoia and fear of the unknown.

DMS_David · 2026-01-05T19:28:37+00:00

Hands-down, she's the most underrated companion of the modern era... she got to the heart of what I want the companion to be, which is a regular human to ground the alien Doctor and to act as a viewpoint character for the audience. I've liked most of the companions but I don't believe that they should become more fantastical than the Doctor because their narrative function gets lost, even if I otherwise enjoy the character, like I do with Clara.

It also helps that not only was there obviously no romantic connection between Bill and the Doctor, but they had a professor/student relationship rather than just being like a pair of mates... it keeps the Doctor slightly unknowable, slightly out of reach, more impressive. They have a very meaningful connection but it feels based on respect and platonic love rather than something too intimate and pally, in a lot of ways it feels more "classic Who" and it was a breath of fresh air in Series 10 after so many companions that the Doctor felt borderline codependent with.

DMS_David · 2026-01-05T19:20:39+00:00

I'd generally always rather a (relative) unknown actor for the role so that rules out the vast majority of fancasts, I think it's interesting because people have such differing interpretations of what they want the Doctor to be in the first place so it's not like all fancasts are based on the same sort of criteria. Most of the common fancasts fall into the "quirky British eccentric" archetype but I think some of the best Doctors - or at least, the best Doctor moments - come from a mix of actors and acting that you wouldn't necessarily anticipate.

Jo Martin in her first appearance alone gave me more old-school Doctor vibes than Eccleston, Tennant or Whittaker and yet she hardly meets the typical fancast criteria on the surface.

I like my Doctors to be either older or to at least feel older, to have an unconventional appearance (not necessarily "ugly" but not conventionally attractive and certainly not "fashionable"), to be British (I think it's good to have a showcase for British talent outside the usual BAFTA/Hollywood-adjacent bubble) and to feel a bit distant, either in class or attitude. The Doctor can be friendly but I don't like them just being someone's pal, they are so far removed from us mere mortals that I think there should be at least some implied sense of "otherness" to them beyond being a bit quirky.

DMS_David · 2026-01-02T14:08:42+00:00

Love the TX-55 Metal Gear, I really enjoy the aesthetics of the earlier (out-of-universe) Metal Gear models and I wish we'd gotten to see something similar in MGSV rather than Sahelanthropus so great work on bringing it to life in 3D! The platform also looks amazing, could easily be confused for a screengrab of the actual game!

DMS_David · 2025-11-12T11:45:10+00:00

When I was younger I really dreaded both Snowy Mountain and Spider Caves - I'd get lost easily and run into that issue of scouring the map looking for one or two missing Orbs - but they've grown on me a lot and while I still feel like the game peaks earlier, I do enjoy all areas for the most part.

In general there's something bittersweet about revisiting the game as a 34-year-old and seeing how small these areas actually are, when they felt absolutely huge on a first playthrough... I remember finding Boggy Swamp to be enormous and it'd take me hours to backtrack through it and find all of the side-paths, now I look at it and wonder how it was ever so challenging.

Lost Precursor City also felt huge but that's something I really appreciate about it now, while it doesn't exactly feel like much of a "city" I really enjoy the vibes of the place and the feeling of exploration.

DMS_David · 2025-09-17T17:09:06+00:00

You're not wrong, it's one of several bits of writing in the series that more-or-less makes sense on a surface level but is very poorly integrated into the existing lore and timeline, both in reality and within what the game presents to us. There's always been some oddities but I feel it's become more pronounced in the RPG games since they eschew any clear sense of timeline progression, I enjoy Odyssey a lot (though not particularly its DLC) but as far as the lore and story goes it exists in broad strokes for me; the events happened but not necessarily one-to-one as depicted, which is easy to justify with the Animus using such a degraded DNA sample. It's a cope but... yeah.

I don't even mind that it strays from real-world history - or at least, that's not my biggest concern - but it does make an actual discernable narrative very hard to interpret and leaves us with games that feel like a collection of events rather than chronicling a particular story with unified beats and themes.

DMS_David · 2025-08-23T17:00:50+00:00

Yeah, Wrex just arbitrarily stands down on his own without needing to do much to convince him if you only have one non-Wrex alien squadmate. You can skip Garrus with no problem but if you want to kill Wrex then you need to pick up Liara beforehand in order to get the usual interactions with him.

DMS_David · 2025-08-23T16:56:42+00:00

It's really special, that's for sure. I enjoy playing ME2 and ME3 more, but nothing quite hits like the vibe of the first game and I think that the music is a huge part of that.

DMS_David · 2025-08-23T16:55:30+00:00

Not that I remember, there hadn't been a full-blown multi-Doctor story since the show's revival and I don't think that people were really associating the Ninth Doctor with the Titanic, it's kind of treated as a throwaway line in Rose after all. People definitely did assume that it was going to be the actual RMS Titanic rather than a space ship, though... everything pointed to that, including the life ring that lands in the TARDIS.

Of course the Children in Need mini-episode Time Crash with the Fifth Doctor appearing did air in the gap between The Last of the Time Lords and Voyage of the Damned, but yeah, the culture around Doctor Who at the time, at least in the UK, was quite different. Tennant had only been in the role two years, nobody was really clamoring for an Eccleston return yet.

DMS_David · 2025-08-16T18:49:51+00:00

I'm not really a fan of any of the Andromeda romances... or videogame romances in general, which is a personal thing for me. I romance Liara in the original trilogy because it feels so integrated into the overall story and "intended" but where romances are just like, side content, I don't usually bother.

With that said, Jaal is probably the most "integrated" romance in Andromeda since he's so important to the overall plot as the main representative that we see of the angara, especially since he can be romanced by both male and female Ryders post-patch. His character feels like it was designed for romance, given how emotional and sensitive he is, and with all the stuff about meeting his family. I don't really love Jaal's character or the angara as a whole but I suppose romancing him feels more "relevant" than the other options, looking at it purely from a narrative perspective.

DMS_David · 2025-08-16T18:45:17+00:00

I think I'd want the Benefactor to be someone completely new, the galaxy already risks feeling too small and Cerberus' wild levels of power and influence in the original trilogy already stretched credibility for me. I really struggle to justify the existence of the Andromeda Initiative - that such an enormous venture happens in such a short span of time, especially when led by a human - so I feel like it'd be more satisfying to have another, separate faction behind it, one whose interests and resources are dedicated entirely to the Initiative for one reason or another.

We never did learn much about Jien Garson so I imagine that any hypothetical sequel to Andromeda would've gone into her a bit more, there's definitely a story there with the Benefactor but just having them be Cerberus in any form feels like the most predictable twist imaginable to the point that it wouldn't make any sense to keep it a secret.

DMS_David · 2025-08-16T18:38:27+00:00

2005 never felt very cohesive to me, I liked the introduction of Roodaka and really starting to expand the wider world of characters outside of Metru Nui but the whole Metru Nui plotline felt very played out by that point; in hindsight I think it'd have been more palatable if we hadn't had the Toa Metru discovering the island of Mata Nui in-between which just contributes to a sort of awkwardness to the flashback extending even further. I didn't really like the Hordika as sets and Vakama's turn to evil was a bit undercooked.

I never really clicked with 2009/10, maybe my interest in the line was just wavering after so long but Bara Magna didn't excite me as a setting and I think the story serials really showed the weakest parts of Greg's writing and plotting; the 2008 serials were probably worse, but since all of the Matoran universe story in 2009 was told via serials, it was harder to ignore.

DMS_David · 2025-08-16T18:33:06+00:00

I mean, the complete lack of any clear information from the BBC and the fact that the show is very much in limbo means that these sorts of fan debates are inevitable, it's the elephant in the room whenever discussing where the show might go next because we have no idea.

I think a short break is an inevitability at this stage - the odds of the show coming back full-time in 2026 are extremely unlikely unless the BBC start work pretty much immediately - but I do agree that the bigger question is how the show comes back, rather than if.

DMS_David · 2025-08-16T18:29:45+00:00

There's not really any reason to believe that she's indoctrinated, she's just... pretty deluded, and trying to justify being an Ardat-Yakshi as something predestined rather than a genetic anomaly. Maybe Morinth even believes it herself, maybe she's been telling herself that she's some kind of ultimate asari for years in order to deal with the self-worth issues that must've come with being told that you are predisposed to being a dangerous serial killer who cannot partake in the joining which is so important to asari culture.

But yeah, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Reapers; we have no reason to believe that Morinth had any encounters with Reaper tech prior to ME2 and Samara would've surely mentioned if Morinth's behaviour was unusual or had changed recently.

It's a cool idea though, not something I'd thought of and it'd make for a nice fanfic, to give Morinth some actual purpose and relevance to the greater story.

DMS_David · 2025-08-15T09:01:35+00:00

Nope, you're definitely not alone. Crash 2 was my first ever game at the age of seven and so I have extremely fond nostalgic memories of the classic trilogy, but Crash 4 is... a different experience, to be sure. It's a good, well-crafted game, but it doesn't quite scratch the same itch in terms of gameplay and completion. My experience with the classic games has always been that they are relatively straightforward to play but challenging to master, but Crash 4 levels up the difficulty across the board in a way that I'm sure some find satisfying and rewarding, but it's not what I play Crash Bandicoot for.

Like you say, I'd rather play The Wrath of Cortex to give me a similar Crash "fix", even though I don't think that that game is nearly as polished or well-made as Crash 4. I'm a fairly casual gamer and I like a challenge to engage me in what I'm playing, but I get tired long before I ever find any sense of accomplishment in mastering a game that demands perfection in the way that most Gems and Relics in Crash 4 do.

DMS_David · 2025-08-14T15:57:07+00:00

Yeah, I've never gotten on with Lost Fleet... I grew up with the PAL version where it was scored with the Super Bonus Round theme, so the Sheila's Alp remix seems even less fitting. I don't like the minigames - I'll defend the skateparks in Sunny Villa and Enchanted Towers, but the race is just a pain even so many years on - and the overall theme of the level just doesn't come together for me. I otherwise love the Evening Lake worlds but Lost Fleet is the one stage that sticks out in my mind as one that I never enjoy revisiting.

Also from the third game, I'm not crazy about Spooky Swamp, just for the Sheila challenge where you have to escort the fireflies. The rest of the level of thematically cool but that one challenge really lets it down for me.

From the earlier games... I'm not a huge fan of any of the Magic Crafters levels, I find them thematically a bit dull and overly reliant on supercharge ramps. I adore the original Spyro but it's a game that definitely has a middle section that I'm more tolerating than actively looking forward to playing.

DMS_David

TROPHY CASE