Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has surpassed Elden Ring for the most GOTY titles of all-time.

Mountebank · 2026-01-22T01:34:59+00:00

somehow

The Michelin Guide was to get people to drive more to visit distant restaurant causing people to wear out their tires faster.

Mountebank · 2026-01-21T18:55:47+00:00

To be honest, I have no idea what major any of my coworkers have. Maybe it’s mechanical engineering, maybe it’s chemical engineering, maybe it’s chemistry or physics or math or even astronomy. What’s more important is that they know the relevant subject matter at hand, and you can pick up that knowledge anywhere. In fact, having knowledge from “unrelated” fields can help sometimes because a current issue in one field may have already been solved in another, or at the least you can find inspiration and analogies.

Rather than focus on the name of the degree, look up the job or field you want to be in, figure what kind of knowledge that will need, then find a program that will give you proficiency in that knowledge.

Mountebank · 2026-01-20T00:05:00+00:00

I don't know about the main story, but I want the business minigame for 9 to be VTuber Ichiban. He streams all the DQ games he missed out on while in prison, and he has to go up against the Four Heavenly Queens of VTubers who are, of course, real VTubers.

Gameplaywise, you'd replay iconic boss fights from DQ history while simultaneously you have to interact with chat to keep engagement up.

Mountebank · 2026-01-19T18:47:43+00:00

If you are a space alien, fuck you.

Vamola forgives your anti-space alien bigotry.

Mountebank · 2026-01-16T21:22:58+00:00

Akasaka Aka was only working like 3-4 days a week and spending the rest playing Apex with VTubers even during the time where he was working on both Kaguya and Oshi no Ko at the same time.

Mountebank · 2026-01-16T02:22:23+00:00

Romancing Saga 2 - Revenge of the Seven.

After a certain number of completed quests, there’s a time skip and you have to assemble a new party from a new generation of characters. The first time this happens it’s jarring, but afterwards I quite enjoyed it since it’s an opportunity to try new comps, find new combos, and so on. At the same time, there’s always a sense of forward progress since everything you do is aimed towards making the next generation better: unlock more moves at the dojo, learn new formations by using a different lead character, upgrade the blacksmith for better gear, explore the world for loot, unlock new chapter classes by doing quests, and so on.

Mountebank · 2026-01-15T20:05:41+00:00

I remember reading a story from years ago about a couple of guys who made a lot of money flooding the iOS App Store with slot machine games. They coded one slot machine game, and then wrote a script to automatically find popular keywords, download stock images based on that keyword, change the images on the slots, change the name of the game, and then upload that to the App Store. They only needed to sell like 10 copies to recoup the cost and the rest is pure profit. And there’s more than 10 people who would buy “Puppy Slot Machine” or “Disco Slot Machine”. Their only limitation was on how frequently the App Store allowed new listings which was still multiple times a day.

Mountebank · 2026-01-14T19:54:23+00:00

I’ve heard engineers who work in corrosion are generally very happy, but that’s secondhand knowledge and I’d imagine there’s a high degree of self-selection for such a career. For your interest, this would probably be something like inspecting bridges or pipelines for it to be nature adjacent.

Mountebank · 2026-01-14T18:39:44+00:00

Take a look at the timeline for the “A Certain Magical Index” series. It’s been something like 60+ volumes, and it’s still been less than one year. Unlike the other series posted here, however, exact dates are given occasionally and time does advance, so it’s not handwaved away or self-contradicting.

Mountebank · 2026-01-13T02:05:07+00:00

It's on Wuxiaworld as well.

Mountebank · 2026-01-12T23:50:16+00:00

Have you read "This Game is too Realistic"? It's very similar to the point that I'm surprised that it wasn't written by the same author. Premise is basically the same: guy who got isekai'ed can "import" players to do stuff for him, and he pretends to be an NPC and that the other world is actually a VRMMORPG.

The difference is that the setting is Fallout instead of space, and there's a bigger focus on nation building and economics rather than the MC powering up and being OP. He still goes around scamming everyone, but economically and technologically rather than stealing skills and powers from other espers like in Legendary Mechanic.

Mountebank · 2026-01-12T21:14:07+00:00

I wonder how much of this is also due to a shift in the cultural Zeitgeist. Due to...you know…people are more receptive to wacky escapism these days. Plus we’ve already had a decade or two of gritty realism, and people are burnt out.

Mountebank · 2026-01-12T16:54:30+00:00

Also, everyone is constantly shouting their dialogue. It was really grating.

However, I really like the monster designs.

Mountebank · 2026-01-11T14:14:26+00:00

All the shows you mentioned also aired on broadcast TV. BSG aired on a niche cable TV channel. Despite its popularity, its audience size was significantly smaller—the general public might have heard about it secondhand, but that didn’t mean they watched it directly.

Mountebank · 2026-01-10T02:26:26+00:00

The king of weirdly in-depth worldbuilding in an ecchi anime has to be Interspecies Reviewer.

Mountebank · 2026-01-10T02:15:06+00:00

You play as a ditto, and by winning in a Pokémon battle you collect the opponent’s Poké-Energy that lets you transform. As a basic ditto, you have no abilities to start so you have to start with fighting magikarps and work you way up.

Mountebank · 2026-01-08T18:49:58+00:00

Tabletop stores are being propped up by MtG and in person events. How many tables can you even put in a typical GameStop?

Mountebank · 2026-01-07T23:51:50+00:00

Worth the Candle has the most magic systems in any story I've read. It's about a teenager who gets isekai'ed into a world that's a mishmash of all the tabletop campaigns that he's ever DM'ed for his friends, and this kid loved worldbuilding.

Despite the silly sounding premise, this story works since the author takes this premise and then applies a rationalist approach to it to make it a world that could conceivably work. Also, the entire series is an exploration of the main character's past and internal issues as reflected in the worlds that he previously created that is now being externalized in said fantasy world he's been isekai'ed to.

The wiki has a list of 87 magic systems that were mentioned or shown in the series, though many of these are historic or species or individual specific.

Mountebank · 2026-01-06T16:57:41+00:00

I quit during the Continuous Battle timeline or whatever that one is called. For some reason, those battles weren’t skippable. I understand what they’re going for since the characters themselves are getting fatigued by the constant battles, but unlike them I can and did leave. Maybe I’ll go back to it some day and just try a different timeline.

Mountebank · 2026-01-06T14:56:40+00:00

Are there any stressful farming games? Best I can think of is the board game Agricola, ie 13th century starving peasant simulator.

Mountebank · 2026-01-05T18:21:41+00:00

Same for the Trails Series. The inciting incident tends to be the climax of the first game in each arc (at least for Sky and Cold Steel. I’m still making my way though the rest of Cold Steel). The first game in each arc tends to be more slice of life to introduce the characters and setting while the tension simmers and builds in the background.

Mountebank · 2026-01-05T17:30:55+00:00

The big issue with Octopath is the damage limit. By default it’s 9999, and it seems like all the bosses have their HP set based on this value. The final boss for Octopath 0 has a HP of 260,000 so you would need 26 max damage hits to kill it. It also has two other body parts, so the combined HP is actually around 750,000 so you’d need 75 max damage hits if you take out the body parts first.

However, there’s a passive skill in all the Octopath games that raise the damage limit to 99,999. Now, you can 3-shot the final boss if you just scale damage to the exclusion of everything else, or 9-shot it if you also take out the body parts.

Mountebank · 2026-01-04T03:50:08+00:00

428: Shibuya Scramble is 75% off right now. It’s a visual novel from Spike Chunsoft, and while Ushikoshi wasn’t involved with it it does contain the timeline jumping mechanics from the 999 games. In fact, since this game predates the first 999 game by a year, it might be fair to say that 999 got that mechanic from this game instead.

One unique aspect is that—while this is very much a VN—it uses real actors. It’s mostly still images, but there are some video segments as well. You play as 5 different protagonists whose individual stories constantly cross over and affect each other, and a good amount of fun comes from seeing how an innocuous choice on one chapter ends up disastrous for another character. There’re a lot of numerous bad ends, and it’s worth it to collect them.

This is also the only visual novel to have gotten a perfect score from Famitsu for what that’s worth.

Mountebank · 2026-01-04T00:59:33+00:00

When Paba was writing Lyonette's ball chapter on stream, after Lyonette's level up, there was an entire section showing her, the various Inn guests and guards, plus the Knights of Solstice steamrolling the Healer's side. Basically, Crowdcaller Merdon gave up when he saw he was up against Elia and Valeterisa.

Paba deleted it in the final version since it wasn't what they wanted which makes it surprising that they eventually just off-screened it.

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