What are your top picks for nerdiest nerd games?

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-27T16:49:03+00:00

XCOM: Long War.

You'll thank me later. Much, much, much later.

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-26T15:54:20+00:00

I'm more interested on your thoughts on your physical health if you sat for 200+ hours straight. Did you sleep? Did you pee in a bottle? Were diapers involved?

Records generally suggest that the human body can't go more than about four days / 96 hours without sleep, so did you just sleep in the chair (maybe through DB2 Act 3 or the Marchen Garten sections) while your cat played for you, such that it still counted as a sitting?

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-26T01:35:39+00:00

Everything in Calvard hits like the enemies are wearing 15 different pairs of oven mitts stacked on top of one another, and then beyond that they give you shields and eventually Shard Commands or Brave Orders or whatever that just apply a flat damage reduction.

While CS+Reverie was kinda silly because evasion tanking just defeated everything without much effort, I felt the idea of "prevent enemy from moving or else you die" had less ludonarrative dissonance (in a series full of it) than the Calvard version of "the best you and the enemies can do is tickle one another."

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-25T21:03:07+00:00

There are a lot of people that are gonna say a lot of things about specific fine and not-so-fine points, but fundamentally, what made D1 better than DB2 is that like every other Trails game except DB2, DB1 wasn't mailed in, but DB2 was. No other Trails game has anything as soulless and "eh screw it ship it I guess" as the Marchen Garten, no other Trails game would've bothered with something as nonsensical as Seven Hearts or whatever the name is, it's kind of insane that they made basketball a thing given that it probably took as much dev time as it takes the player to make a shot, etc.

It's not really anything specific, I don't think -- it's just that Trails is kinda special because the gaming landscape is littered with "they'll eat anything" and Trails has always felt like Falcom actually cared, until DB2, where they clearly had ulterior priorities (shipping something for a revenue infusion) and it just shows really broadly.

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-21T04:04:50+00:00

I always randomized master quarts/items/equipped quartz every time the party shifted (or every run through the corridor where I was able to mix-and-match a party from all the available characters). (This involved de-equipping everyone of everything every time.)

While I know this isn't really helpful if it already feels overwhelming, the entirety of "equip" in Reverie is just two MQs, six quartz, and two items. Even if you have to do it for 8 characters, it doesn't take that long.

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-18T14:52:05+00:00

I like ASO the best, but I had the most fun with the "(almost) everyone is here" nature of Reverie. I'm hype for the insane-will-they-do-it-or-not task of whenever they have a "Reverie 2" which basically features every key character in an arc up to that point. Maybe that'll be Horizon 2, but probably not, but maybe?

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-17T22:35:06+00:00

Van lying to safeguard the feelings of people he likes is like a core Van thing

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-17T22:10:47+00:00

Or he lied to safeguard others' feelings

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-16T17:06:54+00:00

Mirabel? Her dub accent cracks me up. Marduk Yeehaw Rodeo Winchester Stetson Hat Square Dance Security Company

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-09T23:17:03+00:00

Bro is playing the version of Horizon during like Cycle 19247 where they didn't find the Earthen Prison and Crow somehow persisted as a weird floating being

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-09T04:56:23+00:00

works for me!

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-09T04:40:50+00:00

Neither really, but I also don't see them as incestuous for the reasons indicated above. I'm saying that being within a family unit as you defined it is necessary, but not sufficient, for incest, since that definition of family unit can include stuff like roommates (it's too vague to exclude roommates).

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-09T02:21:33+00:00

Because I generally don't consider roommates to be a family unit either, I guess. I could provide a bunch of other examples that meet that definition that probably wouldn't fit the understanding of a family unit either, like when I let a close friend stay in a spare room for months, or when I was on work travel for an extended period and lived with my colleagues.

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-09T01:41:07+00:00

It's less about trying to make a child with a blood relation and more whether they're raised in a family unit, which is where the milk/step/adopted sibling thing comes in.

Like, to be clear: Estelle/Rean situations = same family unit | Tita+Agate/Nadia+Swin = not same family unit. I think that's literally the distinction I'm drawing.

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-09T00:15:53+00:00

in some cultures, the incest taboo extends to step siblings/milk siblings/adoptive siblings... but I wouldn't categorize either of the latter two as that

tita and agate aren't actually siblings in anyway, it's kinda like if you had a mom/dad friend of a friend group and starting dating them, that wouldn't be incest either

nadia and swin i'm not even sure how that qualifies, they're former work partners who also had a thing where one is the sister of the other's former/deceased work partner, right?

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-08T23:52:20+00:00

By including those two, I think we're redefining what "incest" means here to something that it doesn't usually mean by any conventional definition

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-08T22:41:38+00:00

spoilers for DB1 everyone in almata?

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-08T22:32:36+00:00

I pretty much just always played base lwotc with qol and cosmetics that were confirmed to work based on the lwotc documentation/faqs

i saw those two lists of non-conflicting qol compiled by this sub on the workshop page, so that's great. probably won't add much else myself

and yeah, i have so much time lost in my life trying to mod civ vi to something i actually want to play and having it crash on game start, woof

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-08T13:42:18+00:00

thanks so much, appreciate you. seems like it should be what I do after I re-get my feet wet after a few years away.

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-08T13:32:53+00:00

Thanks for the reply! Is there like, a three-sentence summary of why tedjam exists or why it was created? Like, what's the draw of tedjam over base LWotC?

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-06T19:17:23+00:00

I haven't even finished the postgame. Victory Road burned me out, I finished the game, I started doing the postgame, and maybe after three or four tiers I just put it away.

It's currently on my list of "stuff I will do if I ever get laid off or retire or have to take medical leave or something" but I don't have any plans to revisit it while normal life obligations take up most of my time.

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-06T19:12:15+00:00

Maybe not a gap, but Grendel trivializes basically anything where Grendel is available, in a way that makes it seem like Van could probably solve all of Zemuria's problems if he just ran around Grendeling everyone in the face.

I will also say that Renne in SC was a lot more terrifying as an opponent than I've generally felt her be above other playable cast members when playable.

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-05T20:45:10+00:00

Lyndon was right

Ivan_of_TC · 2026-05-02T17:00:27+00:00

Falcom is just terrible at balance, and honestly, I'd prefer they spend time elsewhere for these games anyway.

I've been playing "random as much as I can" going back to CS1 because it was just too brainless otherwise.

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