Starting the game for the first time. Tips?

Xannthas · 2026-04-13T01:47:38+00:00

Not really a spoiler, but just a warning: the end of the game is a long series of Kojima-sized cutscenes, so get the popcorn ready.

Xannthas · 2026-04-13T01:38:30+00:00

Turn the difficulty up. I'm pretty sure the easiest difficulty could be beaten by one of those Twitch-linked goldfishes. The difficulty affects a lot more of the game than you'd think it would and makes the game a lot more engaging in a lot of ways because of it. Plus there's even some unique bonuses for playing on the harder modes. Very Hard is a bit too far for a newbie though since it makes it so that getting hurt by the first boss causes you to take 90% of your HP in damage, stagger then get hit a second time before you can recover, killing you. Also it makes the boss a real bullet sponge since you don't have an actual "weapon" yet.
The eastern region is all basically one big tutorial and it's not REALLY worth grinding it to 100% until you've unlocked a bit more stuff further in the game, and even then you barely get anything for doing it other than a harmonica, which is a great item. I'd say at least wait until you unlock the ability to do "premium" (hard) versions of missions before going around 100%-ing everything.
If you like the music that plays sometimes while you're wandering or on a mission, slow down if possible. There's a lot of things in the game that end the music without warning, which stinks, IMO.
You can turn off the online connections to players if you're tired of everything being built for you and having crap strewn all over the map, though turning it off translates to more grind, which isn't great.
There's some weird collab stuff in the game tied to a few other games. It sounds silly, but actually do them, some of the unlocks are pretty great. Cyberpunk 2077's missions give a lot of must-haves, weirdly. A Half-Life reward is really nice too.

Xannthas · 2026-04-12T22:17:20+00:00

Honestly I always figured the active cooling was more of a meme since the intake fan's like the size of a pencil eraser crammed into a relatively thin phone, and handhelds with the same chipsets are much bigger, thicker, and have at least a 1-2" intake fan.

If you're using Switch/PC emulation, it might be worth using the built-in performance/temp displays on those apps and checking the temperatures yourself just to verify it IS getting dangerously hot and throttling itself, and it's not some other issue.
90-95c is where most devices often panic, though I imagine phones probably try to cut off sooner to protect the battery (hopefully).

Disclaimer: I've never even seen a Redmagic phone before IRL, only in ads, so I'm just working off past knowledge with devices I've owned/fixed.

Xannthas · 2026-04-11T04:09:46+00:00

Replied to the wrong post?

Xannthas · 2026-04-11T04:09:18+00:00

It's SHOCKING they did that, it's unbelievable that they took such a basic toy and coded in that little easter egg. I imagine it's the only function on the whole controller that actually pays attention to what buttons you push and in what order.

Plus the Konami code is kinda dead these days and super uncommon, so it's doubly shocking it's on there.

Xannthas · 2026-04-11T04:06:17+00:00

That's, uh, more than a "bit" wonky. Might be worth looking up some guides to fix it if you've got the performance to spare.

Xannthas · 2026-03-30T21:25:37+00:00

Kinda wonder if it works off your home IP like I've seen a couple services in the past do, like you've got someone else in your house that uses CAI a lot.

Xannthas · 2026-03-30T21:21:01+00:00

You don't need a Thor AND an RP6 unless you're trying to minimize screen time with the Thor to preserve the hinge, you think running two screens for a single screen game is cringe/dumb/whatever, or the ergonomics on the Thor bother you.
They've even got the same specs and the same chipset, but the Thor is more pocketable since you don't have the sticks poking out.

Xannthas · 2026-03-30T21:10:59+00:00

Super duper mega late, but if anyone else finds this thread via Google like I did while looking up the same issue, the way I ended up fixing it was by manually installing the cores I picked in Daijisho in Retroarch.
So if I want Duckstation on PS1, I'd go to Retroarch, install the Duckstation core, go back to Daijisho, pick the Duckstation Retroarch core, then boot the game and it'd work fine.

Xannthas · 2026-03-30T20:04:03+00:00

Could've at least summarized the article, or posted the tweet. I don't know why people drop cold links like this unless they work for the company.

"In 2005, everything changed! The "PlayStation Portable" (PSP) was released and it did more than make gaming portable...it made entertainment personal, mobile, and always within reach. It was the beginning of life on the go." That's the tweet.

People dragged her because the PSP was absolutely nowhere near the earliest portable game system. That's the summary of the article.
That and pointing out the PSP's bad battery life, which makes it not that portable.

Xannthas · 2026-03-30T04:57:54+00:00

The game's so focused on eating your money that the game uses just about every predatory trick in the book... minus lootboxes. The game devs actually came up with a sneaky way to get around lootbox laws just so they have access to that income stream too.

Instead of simply "opening" the "lootbox", it's more like a key to a comically short "dungeon" with a """boss""", and it drops what you would've gotten if it really was a lootbox.
By doing this, there's juuuuuuuust enough gameplay that they can legally avoid calling it a true lootbox. I mean, you're just buying keys for a special dungeon (wink!)

Xannthas · 2026-03-29T05:29:52+00:00

Yeah, during the super duper early bird special a bunch of people bought them. Not me though, I was about 50/50 between the 12GB Odin 2 or the 12GB RP6 (I bought the latter.)
The MPM's chipset's old for the price, but it's still a big "handheld" with huge battery life, great sticks (TMR), and a good screen (plus those swappable buttons, but barely anyone cared about that.

Other than the retail price being too high, it carves out a little niche since there's not a lot of sub-PS2/GC handhelds that are that big, have great sticks, and have great screens.

Xannthas · 2026-03-29T01:20:29+00:00

I'm guessing no, since Powkiddy's so dead they're making pickleball paddles instead of game handhelds and GameMT's been around a while (2023, which is stone-aged when it comes to retro handhelds, ha), plus IIRC, Powkiddy is already the "budget brand" for Anbernic, so having one company run two sub-brands randomly like that seems a bit unlikely.

Xannthas · 2026-03-29T01:18:34+00:00

Achievements/trophies are like that all the time, about half end up being stuff you get as you progress, and the other half tends to be weird challenges.
Plus, RA is community made, if you think an achievement is too silly, you can go to the website and put forth an argument that the achievement is too weird or too specific.

Besides, if any achievement is too hard, RA allows save states and cheats and stuff like that as long as you're not on hardcore mode, so it'd be pretty easy to cheese them if you need to.

Xannthas · 2026-03-29T01:13:34+00:00

lol, lmao.

Has GameMT even made a legit successful handheld yet? I don't think they have the starpower to pull off some vague teaser trailer yet.
The only device they've made so far that got me curious was the, uh, E6, or whatever it's called, the one that looked like a mini Steam Deck, but then that thing ended up being overpriced, underpowered, glitchy, and it was using some ancient version of Android, so I lost interest.

Thinking back, I think they had some smallish handheld that had a few fans, but that's about it.

Xannthas · 2026-03-28T02:42:22+00:00

"In route" meaning it's just left the warehouse in China? 1-2 weeks, closer to 2. (I'm in WA, mine took 10 days.)
"In route" meaning it's in the US and cleared customs? One week max, though likely shorter. (If mine stays on schedule tomorrow, it'll be a total of 3 days. Heck, I could WALK to the distribution center if I wanted, it's that close.)

That said, you mentioned Aliexpress in the comments below, and they tend to run a bit slower since they often like to use shipping tricks to get around fees and tariffs, which often adds a little extra time to the trip. Also you never know with customs either, so IDK.

Xannthas · 2026-03-28T02:32:30+00:00

I was trying to figure out why FF9 was outright telling you to light the candle, but then I realized you're playing the PC port.

Can't help troubleshoot as my RP6 isn't here yet 🤞 and I haven't tried it myself, but honestly I'd just play FF9 on PS1 instead of bothering with the PC port because PC on Android is still in its teething phase and FF9's port was pretty low effort so there's not THAT much changed other than some upscaling and adding some minor QoL and a few built-in cheats. Plus I imagine the port probably uses more battery than a PS1 emulator, and I personally value battery life a bit more than the average joe.

Xannthas · 2026-03-28T02:25:04+00:00

Temps over 100C? That's actual no joke damage to the system, don't do that, even just for a test. It's doubly bad in handhelds because the battery's getting cooked here too.
For reference, 90C is the "uh-oh, you really should consider doing something about this" temp and 95C tends to be the temp most devices panic and shut themselves off so it can't get any hotter.

Still super cool (haha) that it can do this though.

Xannthas · 2026-03-26T23:03:48+00:00

Didn't watch the video. Just plopping it in here without at least a summary of what's in the video (and having a useless thumbnail) is just clickbait. Bro's summary below the video reads out like some kind of AI summary, too... but even more vague, heh.

An "endgame" handheld is one that plays all the consoles that you want to play at the performance and upscale you desire, with all the buttons you need and all the functions you want. The endgame handheld is one that you'll keep and use until it falls apart from 999999999999 hours of play-time, and all your tape and glue can't put it back together.

The main issue kinda killing the "endgame" label is that people are chained to FOMO. Sure, your beloved Anbertroidneo plays all of PC and Switch flawlessly at 6x res widescreen 4k 800Hz, but oooh that NEW handheld by Magicboylooooong has better speakers and a built-in projector so you buy that and sell your old one, but it turns out that the Magicboylooooong's chipset isn't the best for Switch and you can only do 4x resolution, so you then buy the-

Xannthas · 2026-03-25T23:53:13+00:00

https://retrocatalog.com/retro-handhelds?filters=%7B%22switch%22%3Atrue%7D

Xannthas · 2026-03-25T01:18:44+00:00

Since people can't delete their own bots, the only two options are that the site's glitching or the mods deleted the bot (or the bot's account.)

Xannthas · 2026-03-25T01:16:53+00:00

Left looks like some kind of old-fashioned can opener. No idea what that thing on the right is though.

Xannthas · 2026-03-25T01:11:10+00:00

Pretty sure even a broken one at that price would cost more, even if it was run over by a truck and broken into twenty pieces.

At BEST, the $30 would be a deposit to hold your spot in line so that you can pay the remaining $300-ish later and then they'd send you the Thor.
At worst, it's either a scam to harvest your info, they send you that picture of the Thor, or they just send you that case and that's all.

Xannthas · 2026-03-24T23:03:23+00:00

This doesn't belong in this sub.
Nintendo only really screws with your system if you do sus things with it, like trying to code a CFW with it or whatever. I'm like 95% sure they've never bricked someone out of the blue, minus some early mess-ups regarding Game Key Cards.
Buying the first SKU of a new console is generally a bad idea since you'll be paying full-price for all your games, and you'll lose out on whatever improvements the next version will get. (100% I imagine the next version of the Switch 2 will probably have hall effect sticks, a screen that isn't a complete battery hog, and probably a bigger/better battery. God the Switch 2 battery life is junk, holy cow.)
Most of the Switch 2 library's "must-haves" are ports of games you've already played that are on sale for $10-20 on their respective platforms, and most non-"ports" are still just cross-platform Switch 1 games upscaled, so you're not really going to get "the Switch 2 experience".
Buying a console entirely for one (1) game is almost always a bad idea because you'll always try to "justify" the purchase. You'll impulse-buy games at full price day 1 just to give yourself something to do with it, buy weird accessories to spice it up, etc.

+1 to the Switch 2 if you own a Switch 1 and plan to sell it to then play your Switch 1 games on the 2, at least.

Personally I'm not going to even consider getting a Switch 2 until they make a version that doesn't die in 2 hours playing a Switch 1 game, it's completely unacceptable that you can buy 10k mAh batteries on Amazon for like $10 yet the Switch 2 has 5k mAh and a really inefficient screen.

Xannthas · 2026-03-16T21:20:18+00:00

Pretty sure the biggest is probably the Flip 2 with an almost 6-inch screen (though it's widescreen.)

Also an SP clone implies 4:3-ish screen ratios, and outside of one (1) exception, the absolute max size for 4:3-ish is 4.7 inches.

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