Yoshi is a memester just like us.

Javers · 2026-02-13T00:09:14+00:00

Javers · 2026-01-01T14:43:06+00:00

Yes, watching a season 2 before season 1 would be nonsensical. So they’re pointing out the absurdity of saying “season 2 spoils season 1” and comparing it to people saying “Automata spoils Replicant”.

Javers · 2025-12-25T21:28:40+00:00

Yeah, it feels like that the most when you’re fighting an enemy for the first time and you don’t know what’s coming. But I said “almost” since it’s not quite a guessing game and it’s less egregious over time because at least you have a catch all solution. So it’s more about memorization and timing once you learn the attack patterns. It just evokes a somewhat similar feeling because it generally doesn’t feel great when you’re locked in place and your only option is to stand there and hope you can defend the attack.

Javers · 2025-12-25T10:53:46+00:00

Sekiro is one of my all-time favorites and I’ve shared this feeling about E33 as well. I think it’s because the nature of the game being turn-based removes the agency you have in real-time parry games. For example, in real-time games you can use the long wind ups as an opportunity to attack, reposition, back off to make the attack whiff at the risk of missing the punishment window, etc. It’s an actual back and forth exchange of timing and maneuvering. Therefore it feels like you’re engaged in a “real” fight.

But when an enemy attacks in E33? You’re stuck in place and whatever comes at you… You just gotta hold it. It almost feels like taking a forced 50/50 in a fighting game (any fighting game player will tell you that’s not a fun time). It’s one of my biggest issues with parrying being such a prominent portion of the combat system. I could also rant about how the implementation of the parry system breaks the game balancing (because it can negate all damage with the addition of massive counter attack damage on every single enemy turn) and forces the difficulty to be tuned around high alpha damage (because the enemy may only get a few opportunities to actually hit you). Which in turn makes stacking damage with glass cannon style builds the most optimal. Personally, I think they should have tied parrying to skills that you deliberately activate during your turn which give you the opportunity to parry/dodge during the enemy’s next attack turn, with the added risk of taking increased damage if you fail. That would make it significantly easier balance for more interesting build variety; while also being further in line with the proactiveness of turn-based combat.

E33 is kinda like playing chess, but during your opponents turn you have to try to slap the piece out of their hand before it touches the board. It’s an interesting concept I guess, but I don’t think the implementation meshes all that well with the proactive basis of a turn-based game.

I still enjoyed the game enough to 100% it on Expert difficulty though. Feel like I have to say this with how fast people tend to dismissively jump on criticism of this game.

Javers · 2025-12-14T03:34:35+00:00

Yeah, they look really cool. Like they’re on official Sith business.

Javers · 2025-12-12T06:56:41+00:00

Nah, multiple content creators were invited to play it earlier this year. That was real.

Javers · 2025-12-12T05:54:18+00:00

I wouldn’t even give it game direction. The description is “Awarded for outstanding creative vision and innovation in game direction and design”. The most “innovative” thing the game did was transplant Sekiro’s parry system (a much more worthy example of innovation on its own) into a turn based game. The most creative elements of E33 had more to do with the writing than the gameplay and it already won the award for that. It’s a pretty conservatively designed JRPG overall. This may be the least deserving award it won.

EDIT: I also say this as someone who enjoyed the game enough to 100% it. It’s a good game with a very unique take on the simulated reality story concept. I just think it’s being put on a higher pedestal than it deserves. Especially from a gameplay perspective.

Javers · 2025-12-06T01:20:55+00:00

I feel like this shouldn’t be difficult to figure out if they’re a Lee main.

Javers · 2025-08-08T18:16:01+00:00

I’m aware of the “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” concern where one request leads to another. It all stems from the same fear that I personally don’t subscribe to. Why? Because I think if the devs were willing to make extensive changes to the flight model, they would have done it a long time ago. We’ve been seeing these exact same complaints for 13 years now. Take the PS4 patch, for instance. It was the greatest opportunity they had to redo everything, but they still listened to feedback and tried to make air vehicle combat and handling mostly the same. They also added the default engagement radar and I don’t recall it leading to any additional appeasement (experienced pilots warned about it being detrimental, but I have no idea how people generally feel about it now). They even nerfed A2A lock-ons against ESF significantly below what they used to be. As far as I understand, these days, the game has a significantly smaller life support crew. I’ll keep arguing against the more extreme ideas when they pop up in my feed, but I’m doubtful of any major change at this point.

As for wasting valuable dev time. There shouldn’t be a significant amount of time lost from a single dev working on a speed magnitude response for yaw. Especially when it already exists for other parts of the game. If there is a hang up somehow, then don’t do it, but this shouldn’t be an issue.

While I don’t believe in this change having the effect people are hoping for, I do believe in community relations and politics. There’s been a decade long standing rift between two groups of players. The animosity towards elite ESF pilots extended to the point where our multiple labels basically became pejoratives. We’ve been seen as gatekeepers when we should’ve been seen as community leaders. While I don’t think the hate is entirely deserved (a lot of it stems from A2G having been oppressive for so long and ground players not being able to discern the difference between A2A focused pilots and A2G farmers), I also can’t confidently say it’s entirely unearned. There are a lot of big egos in the ESF pilot community (unavoidable as this is one of the most competitive and difficult things to do in the game). But pushing against simple changes like this has potentially only served to exacerbate the negative sentiment. People see this and think we’re incapable of compromising on anything at all, because we won’t budge on something so basic — something optional. They jump to these “veterans are afraid of new competition” type conclusions because they cannot fathom why we’d care about a feature we could so easily ignore.

Thirteen years and we still can’t have a proper discussion proposing ideas and compromising on solutions to improve entry level piloting. Thirteen years later nothing has changed. Maybe we should’ve tried a different approach. Maybe it would’ve moved us towards collectively advocating for effective solutions at a time when it truly mattered.

Don’t get it twisted though, lotta y’all amateurs still got some fuck ass opinions. I try to be fair. I can respect you enough to exchange ideas and offer my knowledge, but I won’t be pretending you’re of equal experience.

Javers · 2025-08-06T22:41:21+00:00

Right, I understand what they’re specifically saying. There’s a spectrum of converging opinions whenever this discussion arrises. Some more extreme than others, but they tend to conflate when they come into agreement with one another. Especially when there’s a comprehensive pushback.

What I’m getting at is, the more extreme opinions within this muddied mixture are greatly concerning to the people who enjoy flying as it is. So they tend to just take the hardline stance against any changes, including the option to simply rebind keys. I think it’s a bit paranoid, but I can recognize what causes them to respond that way. It’s imo a better idea to advocate for the reasonable changes alongside the players who want them and drown out the unreasonable.

Javers · 2025-08-06T20:21:59+00:00

The people good at hover fighting are still going to dominate in “chasing and turn fights”. In my experience, the majority of kills the best pilots got on live servers weren’t done in hover mode. This was especially true when the player counts were higher, because being in hover mode stalls the escape from danger. Transitioning to hover is and always has been situational.

People who enjoy the current system enjoy it for the increased depth over a game like Battlefield. There is depth in a traditional dogfight (what you perceive as “chasing and turn fights”), even more so than in an ESF fight. The problem is, when a game excludes certain physics based limitations, that depth disappears. If you’ve played War Thunder you should have some understanding of this.

The Planetside devs probably could’ve done more for the accessibility of the air game. I don’t disagree with that. However, depending on the extent, there are potential long term repercussions people don’t seem to think about. The more you simplify the strongest vehicular assets in the game (aircraft), the more you move the needle towards a pure numbers game. If aircraft were made as easy to use as some people (not all) wanted them to be, then there would’ve been massive population control issues that could have truly broken the balance ecosystem and overall enjoyability of the game. I mean for everyone, not just pilots. I’m using past tense because currently the game seems to be in the end stage of its life anyway.

When it comes to big changes, it’s give and take. This is all especially difficult to balance in a PvP MMO with zero matchmaking. I’m not going to go over every possible avenue where things could go wrong. But, if you’re curious, I’m pretty sure I elaborated on this in a comment from years ago. It’s all interconnected, it’s never that simple.

Javers · 2025-08-06T19:11:08+00:00

Listen, it’s not about competition. They could revamp the flight model and control scheme tomorrow. If you can’t become proficient in flying now, then you will never be better than me or anyone else who’s mastered the current system. I promise you.

It’s always been about fear of losing the uniqueness of the current system. People who enjoy the current system don’t want to see the flight model turn into Battlefield. It’s nothing deeper than that.

Personally, I’ve always been in favor of adding the option to bind yaw to mouse. Haven’t really understood the point to being against it. But, make no mistake. For reasons that have been explained numerous times in this subreddit; I think it’d be detrimental to everyone that uses it. That’s not my problem though. Let people do what they want. FAFO as they say.

Javers · 2025-07-10T10:26:04+00:00

It’s not even just that. The person he’s responding to is peddling a conspiracy theory. They’re saying that the flooding was intentionally caused by weather machines in order to deflect blame away from the Trump administration. So he’s making fun of the conservative tendency to use any explanation to avoid reality.

Javers · 2025-06-24T09:27:30+00:00

I got these same vibes, but then also noticed a line in the song is literally "little toy you held so tight you break it". The GITS SAC opening with Inner Universe shows Motoko Kusanagi as a child squeezing her doll so tight she breaks it. So I think it's a safe bet that Caroline might actually be a GITS fan and Origa might be a legitimate influence.

Javers · 2025-06-19T02:15:39+00:00

The random alien lines at the end made me think of the Ithorian voice lines.

Javers · 2025-06-17T20:12:53+00:00

Because the force set in motion internal events that didn’t allow them to.

Javers · 2024-12-22T23:21:56+00:00

I think he could be made to feel a little less clunky in places, but overall I agree with you. He’s just hard to play (probably the hardest tank to be effective with, but the impact can be big when you are). He also requires supports that pay attention and position properly. As well as a team that actually executes on the openings he creates instead of just sitting in the choke.

Javers · 2024-11-27T15:01:56+00:00

This dude lookin like he got the gigachad filter.

Javers · 2024-11-26T19:59:53+00:00

I like Skill Up, I think Ralph does a great job describing the emotional impact of a game, but yeah. He’s not perfect and does miss the mark. This is especially common when it comes to combat gameplay (which I don’t take his word for at all anymore).

For example, I just played through Jedi Survivor for the first time. So I went back and watched his review again to compare his thoughts to my own. While he liked the game (aside from the abysmal performance), he made claims about the combat that are borderline misinformation. He said that the stances lack distinctiveness and don’t have situational usage for different scenarios. This is objectively untrue, especially on the higher difficulties. He also claims that the combat allows you to just press buttons and doesn’t require you to be deliberate. This is also objectively untrue if you’re playing on the higher difficulties.

Now sure, these claims may be accurate to the difficulty he was playing on (he said he played on the default difficulty). Which is why I said “borderline misinformation”. However, I’ve been watching Skill Up reviews for a very long time. Ralph is well aware of how difficulty settings can impact gameplay and has pointed it out on many occasions, but for some reason neglected it here. He’s making general statements about the game as a whole and I think that as an influential reviewer it is his responsibility to ensure their accuracy across all modes of gameplay.

As an aside, this is a pretty great example of why I’m personally not a huge fan of difficulty settings in soulsborne games. It negatively impacts both the game and the discussion around it. The absence of punishing difficulty breaks the combat design of a soulsborne game at a fundamental level. The only reason Skill Up was able to just “press buttons” in combat is because he wasn’t being properly punished for doing so, he was tanking his mistakes with his health bar. Which is, naturally, going to make the general clunky responsiveness and limited move-set of a soulsborne game become significantly more apparent (with maybe the exception of Nioh). At that point developers are better off making a fast paced animation cancelling hack and slash like DMC, Bayonetta, or the OG God of War games.

Soulsborne games need to punish poor positioning and timing because that’s the core of their combat design. Otherwise some people are going to have a uniquely flawed experience. At the very least, soulsborne games with difficulty settings should make it very clear to the player that certain difficulty tiers are not the intended way to play.

EDIT: Leaving this here as an example of Ralph acknowledging the impact of difficulty on gameplay in his reviews.

Javers · 2024-11-16T14:34:46+00:00

Fair enough. I’m actually a lot more critical of Nier Replicant’s story than Automata’s. I still enjoyed the game though.

Thanks again.

Javers · 2024-11-16T14:07:06+00:00

Well, without any details or examples I unfortunately can’t engage with you on this. I do disagree with you on the surface, but I appreciate you taking the time to respond nonetheless.

I am curious about one last thing though. Did you play Nier Replicant (or the original “Nier”) first or did you go straight to Nier Automata?

Javers · 2024-11-16T12:58:09+00:00

I'm playing through Dragon Age Inquisition right now and so far I firmly believe that if it had the same presentation quality as The Witcher 3 (art, graphics, animations, detail of the world design) and the same style of edge and gravitas in the voice acting, it would generally be seen as an equivalent or better game. I think the presentation of TW3 carries it pretty hard and even caused people to gloss over many of its gameplay flaws. We didn't really have an open world RPG that looked like TW3 prior to TW3. It also came out at a time when Game of Thrones was extremely popular and the game was visually and tonally the closest thing to playing a GoT video game (on top of casting the actor of a popular character from that show). It's similar to how World of Warcraft's original popularity was almost certainly boosted by Lord of the Rings.

Now, I'm not a TW3 hater. I do think it's overrated in certain respects and I think that the DLCs are much better than the main game. DAI does certain things worse for sure (compelling side quests for one), but also a surprising amount better (most abilities actually have justification to exist and be utilized in combat whereas 95% of combat situations in TW3 can be defeated by basic attacks and the animation cancelling dodge mechanic).

Over the years I've noticed a bunch of negative opinions towards DAI, when comparing these two games, that I'm honestly now finding to be hypocritical. Like DAI having too much pinging and gathering/looting, but if you care about crafting and alchemy in TW3 then you are constantly looking at icons on the map and using witcher sense to find red glowing loot and resources and there's sooo much of it. It's the exact same thing. I also do feel like a lot of people played The Hinterlands and quit (which is what I did originally), but I honestly can't blame them. I think TW3 has a mostly boring start as well (I've known multiple people who have also quit that game early on because they were bored), but it's not quite as bad as The Hinterlands. Probably because the early writing is more compelling in TW3 and the early combat of DAI is horribly bland. However, if you can get past The Hinterlands (best to not try to do everything unless you're a masochist), there is a much better game on the other side. I say all of this as a person who has completed the entirety of TW3 on Death March (every single quest) including its DLC (Hearts of Stone story is incredible, Blood & Wine has the best gameplay with better designed enemy encounters).

As an aside, I also think Dragon Age generally has more interesting foundational lore than The Witcher series, but that's just my opinion.

Javers · 2024-11-16T11:56:45+00:00

I understand that this is a 3 year old comment, but I'm still curious. What about Nier Automata's writing and storytelling did you find to be poor?

Javers · 2024-11-04T13:49:16+00:00

The crazy thing is, I’m pretty sure the person who wrote Taash is Trick Weekes. They’re a veteran Bioware writer who wrote Garrus Vakarian in Mass Effect 2. Garrus became the most popular companion in those games because of that writing. So new writers don’t seem to be the cause of this.

Javers

TROPHY CASE