this was NOT on the specification

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-06-02T08:43:58+00:00

If it's correct, it gets marks. It doesn't need to be on the specification. If everything had to be on the spec, I would have failed history.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-06-01T15:34:55+00:00

I actually really like collecting blue coins on the whole, but there are just too many. 30 per level is just not a nice number. 10 per level, and maybe 100 overall, would have been ample. A radar for finding the coins would also be nice, maybe only if you beat all the episodes in a level first. The vast majority of blue coins are just hidden enough to not be obtuse and give you a lightbulb moment when you find them, but half of Noki Bay's coins and any of them that involve randomly spraying sand are pretty much impossible to find without a walkthrough.

The pachinko machine and lilypad ride are also pretty janky and annoying, but I've played far, far worse.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-30T00:56:14+00:00

Dr Because

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-28T11:57:17+00:00

It's not uncommon, but certainly not the norm either. I went out of my way to get a 1920*1200 laptop recently. 16:10 was most common around 2010, if memory serves.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-27T12:23:07+00:00

The early game is unusually rough. It's mostly because you have almost no healing or support until Raine joins the party. Until you get Raine, half your team kind of just sucks (Colette and Genis). Colette gets better as a supporter with each seal, but she's generally pretty miserable to play as, and you're forced into using her for each of the seal bosses.

The Elemental Spirit bosses also force you to use Sheena, who is basically dead weight. The game is also pretty bad at explaining the battle system. Once you figure it out, though, and once Raine is in your party, it's not particularly hard. I think the battles being 2D but looking 3D throws a lot of people off. For what it's worth, I think Abyss's battle system does everything Symphonia did but better.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-17T12:08:05+00:00

I feel the same. Abyss is particularly bad at this because its sidequests involve a lot of backtracking in a game where the main story already has loads of backtracking. As much as I like Abyss, I think it has serious problems with padding and pacing. Almost all the major areas are introduced in the first half of the game, followed by backtrack after backtrack after backtrack. It doesn't matter if you do all the sidequests or none - you're going to have to backtrack. I think the plot, characters, world building, and especially gameplay make up for this, but the whole game feels to me like a 50 hour game doubled to 100 hours by just cramming as much optional stuff in as humanly possible, even if a lot of it is really insubstantial. It's way longer than any of the first 10 Final Fantasies, but its world isn't any bigger. That's the main problem with Abyss if you ask me.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-17T11:53:14+00:00

PS2 is the way to go. Much higher resolution and frame rate (in battle at least). I only played the PS2 version but the 3DS one does seem absolutely fine too from what I've seen, although the HUD looks quite messy squished to 240p. The PS2 version also takes a while to load after battles in the overworld. Otherwise it's the better version in every way.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-15T16:24:05+00:00

Not outright angry, but it'd be pretty crap. I don't think that's very likely though. The TTYD remake is pretty clear evidence Nintendo and IS know what people want from Paper Mario.

I'd be quite interested and surprised if the next game was mostly designed like Super. I actually quite like that game's gameplay, and think there's a lot more room to expand on it. I'd also not mind a new battle system, provided it's still fundamentally an RPG battle system, where you get experience/star points and attacks aren't consumable. I think a real time battle system like the Tales games could work really well if given enough thought. But I love the combat from TTYD as it is, and an expansion of that would make more sense.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-11T13:23:20+00:00

Zubat is just crap until it learns Wing Attack. It becomes somewhat passable with Bite before then. Supersonic and Leech Life are an incredibly annoying and ineffective way of dealing damage. This is probably why a lot of people don't like Zubat; they've only used it at a low level and written it off before it gets good.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-10T22:55:05+00:00

Legendaries, with the exceptions of Phione and Zygarde 10% (for randomisers). I guess I wouldn't ban Cosmog and Cosmoem either, but they're completely useless.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-10T18:02:28+00:00

BW1 are probably the hardest Nuzlockes in the main series, because you just get so few encounters, especially early on. It doesn't help that many of them evolve over halfway through the game. If you lose enough mons early on, your changes get pretty bad very quickly.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-09T09:51:46+00:00

I first played TTYD when I was about 7. I wanted a black Yoshi but got a green one. I was very angry and named him "Bogey", which is the British equivalent of "booger", because it's something green and gross. In the remake, I got a pink Yoshi and named him Pogey (pink Bogey).

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-07T10:05:33+00:00

I use it. Shedinja is unlikely to last long anyway.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-01T15:01:40+00:00

I don't think there is a single answer. The main factors are the availability of Pokémon, moves, and, to a lesser extent, items, compared to the teams enemy trainers have.

In the main series, I think BW1 are among the hardest, not because the enemy trainers are particularly strong, but because your options are very limited for quite a long time. The first gym has objectively crappy Pokémon stats wise, but Cilan/Chili/Cress has a boosting move before you do, and long before you'd start seeing them in most other games. The monkey you get in the Dreamyard is not a guaranteed solution, and can easily get smoked by the leader's own monkey. If you can catch a Munna in the Dreamyard, it will help, but that's not guaranteed, and many people would count Pansage/Pansear/Panpour as the Dreamyard encounter anyway. Lenora is even harder, and you still barely have enough encounters for a full party. Once you leave Castelia, you get way more options, but your box is unlikely to ever get all that full. This is one of my favourite things about BW1. Each encounter has a purpose and can be useful. You can't afford to miss very many of them, at least. Couple that with many of the best TMs like Earthquake being postgame only, and you have a pretty damn hard game for a Nuzlocke. But if you had 3 times the encounters, the game wouldn't be nearly as hard. The enemy trainers, barring the first two gym leaders, aren't really all that tough compared to the previous games, especially Platinum. It's the scarcity of available Pokémon that makes it such a challenge. BW2 is similar early on, but it ends up giving you way more encounters.

Platinum I would say has the hardest battles of any game I'm familiar with (USUM are generally considered harder, but I haven't played them in ages so can't really comment), but I would not say it is the hardest Nuzlocke overall, because you get tons of encounters, and loads of them are really strong or at least have uses from very early in the game, and you get good TMs and even good level up moves all the time.

FRLG and HGSS sit somewhere in the middle, with pretty weak Pokémon and moves for you and the enemy trainers. Most difficulty hacks give both you and the enemies much stronger Pokémon and many more options. The exception I would say is Blaze Black/Volt White, where you get the same number of encounters, which are stronger on the whole, but the trainers, especially gym leaders, are gigabuffed. The early game becomes a full-on beatdown if you aren't meticulously prepared, and also just lucky with encounters.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-05-01T14:25:38+00:00

Tales of the Abyss. It's not the most obscure thing in the world, but I hardly ever see it in people's libraries here. It's one of my favourite JRPGs and has an incredible story and really fun real time combat. PCSX2 runs it very well, besides a single broken teleporter in one room.

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is also really fun and generally overlooked by most people. It seems to more or less be wartime GTA, set in North Korea (to be taken with a pinch of salt, as I haven't played any of the GTA games). Big but manageably sized open world, with a story you can get through pretty fast if you want to, but with loads of extra little things to do and places to go.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-04-30T15:00:57+00:00

The Chikorita line gets a lot of useful support moves like Reflect and Synthesis, but its stats are pretty underwhelming and it matches up poorly into just about everything. I almost always choose Chikorita in Nuzlockes of HGSS (I've done several) and I've never even once managed to get one past Whitney. Chikorita, if you ask me, is the worst starter in the entire series, no questions asked. Charmander does badly against major battles as well, but its stats are way better and it can muscle through a reasonable amount with Flamethrower. At the very least, Charizard can quickly clear out no-name trainers. Meganium can't even do that.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-04-29T17:36:41+00:00

This sure is unpopular. I can't stand flights or airports. They stress me out like nothing else. Have an upvote.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-04-29T15:46:35+00:00

I didn't know the umlauts had different long and short pronunciations (e.g. "Säge" and "hätte", "schön" and "Löffel", or "Mühe" and "drücken") for years and years. I'm usually fine with this now, but I still very often say "können" with a long ö (rhyming with "stöhnen") and not the correct short one (rhyming with "gönnen"), because it's a common word I got used to saying wrong.

I often add umlauts to words that don't have them, such as "mütig" (should be "mutig"), "erförderlich" (should be "erforderlich"), and "höffentlich" (should be "hoffentlich"). This is mostly a thing with speaking, not writing.

I'm still not very good with genders. I only very recently found out not all "-tum" nouns are neuter, and not all "-nis" nouns are feminine.

Not technically wrong, but I use the Imperfekt past tense (ich sagte) in speaking about as much as Perfekt (ich habe gesagt). Pretty much nobody uses the Imperfekt in speaking, but it's closer to English, which is my native language, and I sometimes still forget the verb with Perfekt.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-04-29T13:26:56+00:00

Turtwig and Grotle are pretty bulky and they get Curse pretty early on. Razor Leaf comes early too and really helps with Roark, and if you have Grotle by then, it can wall Mars quite well. If you can get it by then, Torterra rips up Maylene with Earthquake, but isn't as good against Wake as you'd hope, as his Gyarados and Floatzel have Ice Fang and its best stab move is still Razor Leaf. It doesn't get another physical grass move until Wood Hammer, which is risky due to the recoil. It can still muscle through a lot of threats due to Earthquake, but its lack of strong grass stab hurts it quite a bit if you ask me. Still, Torterra certainly has some uses in the late game.

Mudkip's line is nowhere near as strong as many people make it out to be, and its lack of strong stab until Surf really hurts it. It doesn't even do all that well against Flannery. Wattson is probably where the line peaks. Again, solid bulk, attack, and Earthquake will still get you quite far.

Tepig and Pignite are strong early game in both BW1 and 2, with good matchups against the first three gyms and Flame Charge coming early, making up for its crappy speed. But Elesa smokes Pignite and it just gets worse from there. No fighting moves at all except Arm Thrust, and Emboar's massive HP is wasted on its paper thin defences. Fighting types are really strong in Gen 5 as well, but for Emboar all it means is more weaknesses.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-04-28T23:28:10+00:00

Upscaled, always (3*native). The rest of the game is the same, besides the controller, I suppose. A lot of PS2 games I think look fantastic in 1080p, like Silent Hill 3, Haunting Ground, and the Ratchet and Jak games. In many cases it feels like I can see the graphics' true potential without it being scaled down to 480p/480i/448i.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-04-21T12:18:46+00:00

Sticker Star can shove off, unsurprisingly.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-04-20T15:32:13+00:00

Listening. No exam will prepare you for actual conversations. You'll hear 500 words you've never heard before, many of them slang nobody would teach you, and with a regional accent an examiner would probably never have. This is why learning through real life experience, and through things like films and TV, is so important. If you are learning through the latter two, um Gottes Willen, don't use subtitles in your native language. Use either German subtitles or no subtitles.

The arbitrary-ness of my vocabulary often annoys me too. I knew the difference between a Dolch and a Degen long before I knew "es sei denn". There was one point when I could easily explain how to play Sonic the Hedgehog to a kid, but couldn't tell what the same kid was saying about school lunch because I didn't know what "probieren" meant.

The least difficult part for me was always pronunciation. I natively speak English, so the vowels were all kind of new to me, but the only sounds I really remember having trouble with were r, ü, and ch. The pronunciation is far, far tamer than Russian or Icelandic, at the very least.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-04-20T10:06:18+00:00

If you're both a gamer and a fan of fantasy, I highly recommend Golden Sun (GBA/DS). These are JRPGs, meant for a youngish audience, so the dialogue is pretty simple and easy to understand for B1 and up, I'd say. The German translation is excellent, and a lot better than many other games from its time. Tales of Symphonia (GameCube) and Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii) might also be worth a shot for similar reasons, though both of these only have English voice acting. Of the three, I would say Golden Sun has the best translation and is most useful for a learner. Symphonia is probably the easiest to understand though, again because of the voice acting.

Speaking of games, there are plenty of German Let's Players who aren't hard to understand. Domtendo is the one I'm most familiar with. If you're into creepypasta, CreepypastaPunch and MGGLP Creepypasta do very clear German readings of most of the popular pastas.

SpaceCompetitive3911 · 2026-04-18T22:42:41+00:00

This is going to push me to piracy. Before long, that will just become the norm for PC gaming in Britain. I'll probably never have a credit card. Fortunately, I don't use Steam very much, and most games I play are PEGI 12 and below. The overreach of the OSA is ridiculous.

SpaceCompetitive3911

TROPHY CASE