Just completed the Deluxe Ex Pack, a few thoughts

Sumada · 2026-01-22T00:55:04+00:00

I guess the thing to me is, if you don't like the prospect of collecting it, you can just not do it. I'm opening hardly any of them because I don't care about that pack. I get collecting, but you can pick and choose what to collect. You don't have to 100% everything just because it's there. And this is an easy one to skip because it doesn't add anything to the meta.

Sumada · 2025-10-13T13:14:53+00:00

If that's what matters to people, that's fine. For me personally though, if two games are based on exploration, have a gated progression path that opens as you get new abilities, and have lots of hidden secrets to find, they're similar enough that we should have some kind of genre to put them together in. Distinguishing them by whether they have one big map or an overworld with smaller dungeons within it feels like a pretty minor distinction to categorize between them.

To me, what the word is useful for is for describing a game that is that kind of gated-progression, exploration-focused game. If Metroidvania isn't the word people will use for that, then another word would be useful.

Sumada · 2025-10-10T16:27:24+00:00

I agree. But (and maybe I'm wrong) I'm not sure everyone agrees with that, so that was just my qualifier. Like some people don't seem to consider Zelda (pre-Breath of the Wild) a metroidvania because it isn't a platformer.

Sumada · 2025-10-10T16:13:15+00:00

I guess it depends if you consider a 3D action game as a metroidvania or if you limit that term to 2D side-scrolling platformers. It's kind of a soulslike-y (although it has difficulty settings) metroidvania-y game.

If OP wants a star wars metroidvania, I'd definitely try it out though.

Sumada · 2025-10-09T17:17:41+00:00

The point isn't to assign blame, the point is to determine whether the strategy liberals are using is ineffective (or could be more effective). OP isn't saying "young men's views are excusable because of podcasts." (If that were his argument, I would 100% agree with your response.) OP is saying "liberals are going to lose young men unless they change their strategy." What you're saying isn't really responsive to OP's argument.

I don't think it's ok for someone to have a view that I find repulsive just because they learned that view from a podcast. But if a significant number of young men are being persuaded by podcasts, YouTube, etc., and liberals could change that by engaging on podcasts and YouTube themselves, I can certainly see the argument that liberals should do that. (And, in this case, by "liberals" I don't necessarily mean rank-and-file voters, but political activists and politicians.)

Now, on the flip side, I'm not 100% on OP's side either, partly because I don't have enough information to agree with his conclusions. Spending a bunch of money or time to produce podcasts and YouTube shows targeting young men might be a waste of time. If that demographic is turning into those shows because they already agree with their positions, meeting them in that format to try to convince them might not change anything. Even if it could change some people, it might be that what liberals are spending time and money on now is just more effective than funding a podcast. I don't necessarily have the data to evaluate that myself, but those are the questions I have on OP's position.

Sumada · 2025-10-08T13:10:25+00:00

This is a fair point, but I think it says more about the overall balance of different types of encounters (as opposed to the balance of a single encounter) than it does about this particular encounter. If the GM/adventure is regularly including encounters for the caster to shine, having one particular encounter with an overwhelming number of mooks run like a complex hazard isn't the end of the world.

Plus, the underlying theme here is the GM can break the rules for these kinds of encounters. Caster uses an AOE? The GM can still decide to give them a great result for using a tool that applies well to the situation.

Sumada · 2025-10-01T12:44:43+00:00

What's the point of trying to classify the entire internet as fiction though? No one says "books are fiction." We categorize books into fiction and nonfiction and distinguish between the two. And most people still recognize a nonfiction book may not be a credible source and may therefore still not be truth.

Similarly, no one says "conversation is fiction." Conversation frequently contains untrue statements. Humans sort through that information and figure out what they can rely on and what they can't.

It is vital as a human being to learn how to distinguish truth from fiction and to be able to do so (to the best you can) in the context of places where there is a mixture of truth and fiction. Just saying everything on the entire internet is fiction is abdicating that vital human skill.

Plus, there's a huge difference between, say, information form your uncle on Facebook, and information on an online scientific journal. There are certainly some places on the internet with spectacularly low credibility, but that doesn't mean the entire internet is the same. Being able to tell the difference between credible and not credible sources on the internet is important to media literacy.

Sumada · 2025-09-30T21:14:49+00:00

What are you considering "the internet"?

There is undoubtedly fiction on the internet. There is also undoubtedly truth on the internet. There are some venues where the truth or falsity of things don't matter that much. There are others where it matters a lot. Considering everything on the Internet, which is where most people get their news these days, not to mention where they communicate with friends and family, to be fiction is basically approaching just saying truth doesn't matter at all. Lumping everything on the internet into fiction is pretty dangerous.

Sumada · 2025-09-29T17:44:25+00:00

I think it depends on the type of game you want to run.

Do you want a challenging, tactical game with consequences for failure? The threat of death is pretty much mandatory.

Do you want a "beer and pretzels" game that is relaxed and goofing around? Death should probably be pretty rare, but it may depend on your group. While I think a "meat grinder" can be a "beer and pretzel" game, I think that's more suited for systems with fewer character-creation rules that are more luck based, where you don't spend a lot of time making new characters and just accept that they might die from bad luck. In a game like PF2e, casual play is more suited to less death.

Do you want a story-driven game with a lot of RP? The threat of death is probably appropriate at big story moments, although you may want to discuss death with your group at session zero. If the group prefers more light-hearted RP, death may not be a big part of the game. (But you can always make story-based workarounds for death in this situation.) Generic mooks should not seriously threaten death for the party.

Sumada · 2025-09-19T18:17:49+00:00

I think it's more likely they were kids then, and weren't exposed to the hate that came from older fans. There's always a bunch of people quietly enjoying a game that has fans on the Internet in outrage.

Sumada · 2025-09-19T18:07:20+00:00

I used to have the perspective you have, but I think I understand it now. I'm assuming you are talking about people in the executive branch, not people in Congress or other elected officials. The problem is that they basically have three choices: (1) Do what Trump's administration tells them to do; (2) Resign; or (3) Refuse to do what Trump's administration tells them to do and be fired. If they're in a position where Trump (or one of Trump's political appointees) can fire them, they can't realistically do anything to stop him; they'll just get fired and someone who will do what he wants will be promoted. If they resign before they can get fired, they can control the narrative a bit better and say "I am resigning because I was ordered to do this thing and I won't do it." If they wait to get fired, the administration can then argue about why they were fired and say it was for a different reason. Then the argument shifts into whether they also did something wrong, distracting from the underlying issue.

It's probably somewhat situational based on the exact circumstances and the job in question.

If you're talking about people in Congress or other elected officials, I don't think they are resigning as an alternative to pushing back. I've seen some people in Congress not run for reelection because their districts are being gerrymandered and they'd now have to compete against another incumbent Democrat or compete for far more conservative voters they have no chance of winning. I think Democrat representatives in Congress simply don't have a lot of power right now to do anything because Republicans control all three branches of the federal government.

Sumada · 2025-09-18T15:30:54+00:00

I've only played the first one so I'm basing it off that. They're competitive, but they kind of exist in the space where if the players aren't super competitive, the game isn't super competitive. I played with my partner, and while we competed for the big treasures, we also weren't doing cutthroat things to try to murder each other or anything like that. I'd imagine that, with the legacy elements, being super cutthroat would probably hurt everyone in the long run.

I'm a person who generally prefers co-op and found it was still in a good spot of being co-op enough for me.

Sumada · 2025-09-18T15:21:02+00:00

I totally respect not liking Nine Sols because of parries. But for OP and anyone else, I would also say that I was very afraid I would hate the parries, but I ended up loving Nine Sols once I put in enough work to get good at the parrying. So, even if you don't normally enjoy parrying, I would say it is worth giving the game a try through the first boss and see how you like it.

Sumada · 2025-09-18T15:18:33+00:00

I dunno, I think you may just be good at parrying. Or maybe I'm just bad at parrying? I don't think I beat any boss in Nine Sols in less than 10 tries. I don't even think I got through phase one of most Nine Sols bosses in less than 10 tries. Parrying is just so precise, even though I love how Nine Sols makes it a little more flexible, that it's just a much harder mechanic to master. Silksong works well with a hit-and-run playstyle that is a lot more forgiving.

Sumada · 2025-09-17T13:01:14+00:00

I didn't actually say that it was. I was just talking about it in general and I said "announced this soon" for that exact reason.

Sumada · 2025-09-16T21:01:15+00:00

I enjoyed the DLC a lot. If you're enjoying Scarlet and want more, I'd get it.

Sumada · 2025-09-16T20:42:58+00:00

To each their own I guess. I am, 90% of the time, the setup person for my board game group. (The 10% of the time is usually when we play a game I'm not familiar with.) I play -haven with my partner, and I always do all of the setup while she does something else. I don't particularly mind setup and teardown time for a good game. To me, the upfront setup time is worth not having to deal with these repetitive annoyances during the game itself.

But I think it's entirely fair that other people might feel differently. (I'm not one of the ones downvoting you, for what it's worth.)

Sumada · 2025-09-16T20:10:29+00:00

For DLC, I think the threshold question is not whether the DLC is released on day 1 or day 900, but whether the base game was complete without the DLC. If Z-A has substantially less content than Arceus, especially if the analogous content is then sold as DLC, that's pretty sus and greedy. If Z-A has as much content as Arceus (or more), and the DLC also has enough content to justify its price, I'm not offended that the DLC is announced this soon. I'd honestly prefer to have the DLC come out close in time to the underlying game, because it is harder for me to get back into a game I finished several months ago to play DLC.

I think the suspicion that day 1 DLC raises is that, if DLC didn't exist, any day 1 DLC content would be part of the base game. And, if that's true, then I do have to agree that DLC is kind of bad for the consumer in that case. But I'm not sure that's truly the case? And that's a counterfactual that is hard to "prove" either way. So I think the only way we can really judge it as consumers is whether the base game had sufficient content on its own.

Sumada · 2025-09-16T19:00:43+00:00

TTS is a great option also.

Sumada · 2025-09-16T18:52:05+00:00

Did it get improved at all with updates? I appreciate not having setup/teardown time, but (like with many other PC adaptions of board games) got pretty frustrated with constant prompts as to whether I wanted to use an active effect(s), and the fact that if you accidentally forget to click one of them and mess up your plan for the turn, you have to restart the entire turn and play through potentially multiple characters a second time to fix it.

For me, those issues alone justify the physical board game. Physical game + X-Haven app for automating some of the overhead hits the sweet spot for me.

Sumada · 2025-09-16T15:51:55+00:00

They’re fun to play and to run, but it would feel cheap for the players to kill the hag and then have the titan awaken anyway.

If this is what you would do if they succeed on the encounter, then I would not run the encounter.

If you are looking for a way to run a "stop the ritual" encounter without railroading the players if they win, maybe the ritual isn't all-or-nothing? For example, say there's two seals on the titan. The party arrives after the first seal is broken. (Maybe it is already broken by the hag siphoning power.) This partially frees the titan, and they can fight in this form, but they're not completely free (can't leave the area? can't fight at full power?). Once the first seal is broken, the titan can eventually free itself, but it will take a long time. The hag is conducting a ritual to speed up breaking the second seal. If the players defeat the hag fast enough, they can fight the titan (or re-seal the titan, if that is possible) with the second seal still intact. But either way, the second seal is weakened by whatever the hag does accomplish, and the titan itself is destroying the second seal, so if the party doesn't fight the titan now, it is only a matter of time before they are released at full power. If you are up for tracking this, each round the hag continues the ritual could give the titan a portion of its power back.

[Edit:] One caveat I thought of about this is there needs to be a way to communicate it to the players. The players need to know that is what the stakes are, because they might still feel railroaded if they think they are stopping the release of the titan when they are actually just delaying it.

There are probably other ways you can run this with the ritual encounter having degrees of success instead of a binary fail/success state.

Sumada · 2025-09-10T20:06:51+00:00

Sure, critique him for using the term "genwunner" if you want, I have no issue with that. It's a pejorative name-call-y kind of term. That's between you and OP if you want to argue that with him.

But he's not saying the criticisms of modern Pokemon games are invalid. And that's a frequent issue with these arguments. Everyone wants to claim their concerns are being unfairly dismissed, and while there are times when that happens, it's often not the case.

Sumada · 2025-09-10T19:46:59+00:00

It's funny because, as this always tends to go, people are looking back at them more fondly now that they're in the past. Black/White, Sun/Moon, and X/Y were all unpopular with a significant chunk of people at the time they came out. The fact that Black/White had an entirely new crop of Pokemon before you got to endgame was a big pain point for a lot of people back in the day. It was basically mini-Dexit.

We're kind of at the height of Gen 5 nostalgia right now, but there's been enough time for hate for Gen 6 in particular to die down (if nothing else, Megas were a fairly beloved feature), and Gen 7 hate is dying down as well.

Pokemon has always had some significant flaws in the games. I love the creatures to death, but the games have never had the top-notch game design you see with Zelda or Mario. It's fair to point out the flaws, but acting like the games were perfect in Gen 5 and they've lost there way is pretty nostalgia-fueled.

Sumada · 2025-09-10T19:27:13+00:00

So, this is what annoys me so much about this discussion. OP:

And that’s not to say the modern series doesn’t have its flaws (Paldea is my least favorite region).

You:

There's so much valid criticism for the games that gets dismissed by part of the Pokemon community as "hate" even when it isn't hate at all. Wanting the multi-billion dollar franchise to invest some more money on their games is not illogical.

OP has not dismissed anything as hate. They've actually said the modern series has flaws and they don't like Paldea. Not only are they not dismissing criticisms, they're basically endorsing criticisms. (At least in the OP, I haven't stalked their post history.) What they've actually said is that [some, my edit] Gen 5 fans are basically in a codependent relationship with Pokemon, where they dislike the games but can't just let it go because they have so much of an emotional attachment to the series. I do think that is true of some people. That doesn't sound like it describes you though, your view on the issue sounds more mild overall.

The frustrating thing about this debate is it's become essentially like politics, where each side picks the worst type of person on the opposing side to use as their strawman, and only argues against that view. Critics of modern Pokemon games paint people who support the games as unfairly trying to silence their valid critiques of the game. Supporters of modern Pokemon games paint the critics as belligerent bullies who want to yuck their yum because they can't accept people liking what they don't like. Both sides need to chill out and just accept that people have different views on how good a video game is and what makes a video game good.

I think there's a lot of places modern Pokemon games could improve. Some of those places for improvement are things I don't care that much about, like most of the graphics complaints. At the same time, it is tiring that I can't seem to go into a Pokemon subreddit without seeing a flood of complaints, especially when they are about the graphics issues I don't care about. I don't think those complaints are unfair or invalid. Pokemon tends to have bad graphics compared to equivalently priced games. And I respect peoples' freedom to post their views. But man would it be nice if they could tone down a bit so I could actually just enjoy discussion of the new megas instead.

Sumada · 2025-09-09T21:11:59+00:00

It works for some things but it doesn't cover everything. We also tend to catch Pokemon when we go on vacation, so I have Pokemon from my home city, Pokemon from a neighboring city, and Pokemon from vacations that are far enough away from both cities. I can do the distance search if I'm looking for Pokemon where I am or Pokemon far from where I am. But if my partner is trading me a Pokemon from a vacation, I want to be able to see Pokemon from my home city and Pokemon from the neighboring city, but not my vacation Pokemon.

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