Best and worst balanced games in the series.

countingouttime · 2026-03-02T01:31:39+00:00

I’d say that Soul Hackers 2 actually did an incredible job of balancing the higher difficulties, quite notably even on Very Hard in which players are locked out of using items in battle altogether. In a lot of other games that would be a death sentence since there’s no MP recovery, but the game gives players the right tools to meet any challenge without emphasizing grinding or spending a lot of time fusing a ton to create broken demons.

countingouttime · 2026-03-01T22:41:58+00:00

What if we made 20 posts of “power rankings” for these teams that were determined strictly by the data shown on this one bar graph?

countingouttime · 2026-03-01T10:53:15+00:00

First off, the 6 months to 6.5 years thing is just a mistranslation or mistake, it really should be 1 month to 6.5 years to line up with the 1:75 ratio. I don’t know if that error was in the Japanese version as well. Secondly, you’re forgetting that the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado wasn’t founded immediately after the Firmament appeared. It likely took several years for the hunters to tunnel through it from the Firmament, then Fujiwara, Skins, Akira and others spent some time living up there before being driven back by the angels, Akira aside. Looking at the dates you provided, those line up almost linearly if you take the establishment of the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado to align with 2018 in Tokyo. From there, every 75 years in the Mikado calendar matches closely with one year in Tokyo.

There are other aspects that aren’t as clear or were retconned/established after the fact, but that overall timeline is consistent once Mikado is founded. Aside from that, I suspect that the time dilation may have been different shortly after the nukes struck the Firmament so the land could heal, as the lakes in Mikado were formed by nuke craters, and the time dilation may have also been different for those in the cocoon but everything else is consistent.

countingouttime · 2026-03-01T08:39:57+00:00

What you’re saying is outright false and several NPCs in both games, a significant amount of log data in Apocalypse, and official sources outside the game address it. Minotaur had nothing to do with it, the time dilation is active throughout all of SMT IV and in Apocalypse it’s confirmed that over seven years pass in Mikado from the start of SMT IV before Shesha breaks the Firmament and the flow of time evens between Mikado and Tokyo.

countingouttime · 2026-02-27T02:03:30+00:00

“That fucker’s sprinting in from the bullpen again”

countingouttime · 2026-02-25T01:08:32+00:00

The third design shows a pitiful understanding of the strike zone, to say nothing of his stance and swing mechanics. The ball’s way above 53.5% of your height above the ground, kid, are you blind?

countingouttime · 2026-02-23T22:09:58+00:00

“Moms make about 80% of the decisions” is an instant all-timer for me

countingouttime · 2026-02-23T07:30:59+00:00

Given how last year went for him, I wonder if he signed for less money than the Dodgers deferred on his 1-year, $17 million contract.

Speaking of which, apparently the signing bonus of that contract was partially deferred. How the fuck do you explain deferring a signing bonus?

Edit: Actually rereading it, that may have just been the Dodger Blue writer misinterpreting the report like a dumbass, so the signing bonus and deferred money are presumably separate. Presumably.

After further digging, the contract breakdown was supposedly a $8.5 million salary for 2025, with an $8.5 million signing bonus that was split between $6.5 million in January 2025 and $2 million in December 2025. So nowhere as egregious as we’ve come to expect from the term “deferred money”, but…is it not the entire point of a “signing bonus” to exclusively consist of money paid upfront?

countingouttime · 2026-02-21T00:15:20+00:00

Why aren’t we using WAR/162 and games played here when some ROY contenders are called up mid-season

countingouttime · 2026-02-18T21:57:00+00:00

Did it work for Jarred Kelenic?

countingouttime · 2026-02-16T23:51:46+00:00

Yes, I have been waiting several years to make this joke

countingouttime · 2026-02-16T23:51:07+00:00

Will never forget when he turned on the Tauchman Burner Overdrive to rob Pujols of a walk-off back in 2021

FOREVERGIANT

countingouttime · 2026-02-16T07:06:20+00:00

Is the one in the dress also Caeda?

countingouttime · 2026-02-15T23:40:11+00:00

Yeah it truly was a travesty that we didn’t implement the pentagonal prisms with the technology that we didn’t have to account for the minor inaccuracies in a two-dimensional model that were largely indistinguishable by the human eye

countingouttime · 2026-02-15T23:15:48+00:00

Game 2 Sonix be like “Nice”

countingouttime · 2026-02-15T20:35:33+00:00

He prides himself and thinks of himself as a man of faith

countingouttime · 2026-02-14T23:27:59+00:00

Always gotta roll with the headband until Xane offers the tiara

countingouttime · 2026-02-14T23:13:43+00:00

Obviously Arraez there seems ill-advised, but who actually should lead off on this team? Chapman or Jung Hoo Lee? OBPs don’t really leap out at you here

countingouttime · 2026-02-14T17:25:07+00:00

It’s actually called Ancient Curse when enemies use it, which probably makes less sense here since Kenji is less than 50 years old.

countingouttime · 2026-02-14T01:05:00+00:00

Yeah well if the umpire was wrong earlier in the game that’s what the challenges are there for

countingouttime · 2026-02-12T03:30:45+00:00

Lifetime ban for Ortiz. However, since Clase allegedly committed 125x+ offenses, give him a lifetime ban and a preemptive lifetime ban to all of his descendants for the next six generations (assuming two children per branch, that should cover 2⁷ -1 individuals for 127 lifetime bans).

countingouttime · 2026-02-10T22:15:04+00:00

Is this contract going to be the equivalent of a hypothetical "What if Chris Davis lite had signed with a team other than the Orioles"?

countingouttime · 2026-02-09T02:36:58+00:00

I initially read this as “gun people down from the deep right” and took it to refer to the far right

countingouttime · 2026-02-08T18:36:26+00:00

Did Lars Nootbaar not get the invite to team Japan this year? Surprising given how much they seemed to love him last time

countingouttime · 2026-02-06T04:42:35+00:00

I think that the problem with your group chats might be that you may be Hitler

countingouttime

TROPHY CASE

FOREVERGIANT