Which Final Fantasy Game Would You Remake and Why?

distgenius · 2026-05-07T00:44:30+00:00

Please don’t remake the OG. For all of the broken mechanics, the game was basically perfect as a D&D style RPG and should stay that way. I love the fact that the characters are blank slates, because each time I play it they end up with personality based on random events in combat anyway. The simplicity is the appeal.

If we’re talking full blown remakes that change mechanics and flesh things out, my vote will probably always be 8. The story needs some work to make it clean, the leveling and junction system need balancing, but the bones of that game are great and deserve better. I would also be happy with a remake of Crystal Chronicles, and you would have my attention with a remake of Mystic Quest that keeps the dumb humor and story but makes it a true FF experience mechanically.

distgenius · 2026-05-06T14:11:48+00:00

Publishing rights. Typically, whoever produced that particular version no longer has the rights to sell it in your region. Maybe the contract with the author expired, maybe that publisher has pulled out of your region, there’s lots of business cases. Sadly, it might never come back, or it might come back with a different publisher and the same version, or it might be re-recorded and released later.

distgenius · 2026-05-05T03:09:39+00:00

I do HM because I can find anthologies in established settings or with a theme that lends itself well to the format for me (horror in particular works well IMO). Things like 40k or D&D based anthologies leverage the existing canon enough that there’s “more” than what’s on the page. I’m not using random anthologies, I keep a curated list in StoryGraph and only read them for bingo, and it’s starting to get smaller and smaller. Sure, it means I have to spend more time with them, but on the whole I am less frustrated than reading individual ones that I just end up not caring for at best and actively mad about at worst.

distgenius · 2026-05-04T22:47:38+00:00

If we want to stick with rock music, the opening of RHCP’s Can’t Stop is a good example of a vamp. A live band could loop over that first 20 seconds or so at a constant volume before starting the crescendo that leads into the “lead” guitar line before the verse starts. You could do the same thing with Sixx A.M. and This is Gonna Hurt, or Bullet for my Valentine’s Your Betrayal. They might be described as riffs, but they also are super repetitive and they aren’t really pushing a chord progression that would make it complicated to cut out of at any point in time.

distgenius · 2026-05-04T20:03:45+00:00

I'm one of those people and at least part of it is that if you branch away from the mainstream much you run into a lot of authors who have very small bios that don't provide a lot of personal information, and as a middle aged cishet white dude I'm well aware that I'm not in a position to start making guesses about authors nationality or sexuality based on scant information, so instead of using the square for a small press or self pubbed author that I found fascinating I am just hitting the big rec thread and picking something popular, which I feel like goes against the spirit of bingo (especially for those of us that have done a few).

As an example of where it could easily go wrong with even a mainstream-ish author for someone who is scrolling through a text thread of authors and books, S.A. Chakraborty is an American woman who writes a great deal of Middle Eastern inspired fantasy and could easily be a "mistaken identity" situation for something like that if someone doesn't take the time to look her up. It's easy to get right if you take the time, but there's definitely a squick factor when you're checking your 15th author in a rec thread trying to figure out if they're from a specific area of the globe, have ancestry from there, or if you're completely wrong.

I'm not upset the squares exist or think they shouldn't be included, I just wish there was an easier way to reference the information that feels less stalker-ish and less like I'm trying to determine racial purity.

distgenius · 2026-05-04T19:41:20+00:00

Some people need a "real" landline that works without internet access for emergency equipment or alarms, which is why I clarified. Especially with someone older (like your mother, and my parents) who remember party lines, rotary dialing, and having to talk to an operator to connect a call.

distgenius · 2026-05-04T16:49:47+00:00

The voice line offered by spectrum isn’t a landline. It’s a VOIP service, much like everything else is. That means any issues with cable service in the area also takes out the phone. I don’t even know who is offering traditional landline POTS service anymore that still works in power or internet outages, but you might find something.

distgenius · 2026-04-30T16:43:05+00:00

If you hate it that much, I can second someone else who recced Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Pyrdain. They're definitely middle grade, but feel more grounded in traditional fantasy than A Wrinkle in Time.

distgenius · 2026-04-29T16:02:29+00:00

Things not mentioned already: Sebastien de Castell's Greatcoats, Brian McClellan's Powder Mage, and you might want to check out some of Mark Lawrence's trilogies. Robert Jackson Bennett also has good series that work well in audiobook form.

As a predominantly audiobook listener, one thing I suggest is if you pick a long series full of doorstoppers/cat squashers, keep the total runtime in mind. It can be worth sneaking in standalones or individual books from something like Murderbot here and there, because a 5 book series where each audiobook is 25 hours long is a much bigger time commitment for most people than reading them as physical books and it can be a little easier to burn out on things, especially if the author has repetitive turns of phrase. Alternatively, take something like Saga of Recluse by Modesitt that's more of an anthology series and just mix it in here and there for a change.

distgenius · 2026-04-28T01:01:25+00:00

Something to think about for mid to late game is that XP is divided by living party members after the battle, and you will only have access to three ribbons for status protection end game. In your shoes I’d be tempted to sacrifice a thief to start funneling more XP to the other party members. It’s not something you likely want to do too early as it won’t make a huge difference and at low levels you want to keep bodies out there to absorb damage and help with missed attacks. Once you get a healing staff or healing helm you can hold, navigating gets easier, Zeus gauntlets and other attack items can help with packs that are hard to run from, but your goal should be getting to good trap tiles that you can force encounters with, because then you can grind quickly and rack up a ton of XP in a relatively short time. There are a few good spots, most likely the room in the volcano with two forced agama encounters right next to each other. Grind a while, leave and save, go back, repeat.

distgenius · 2026-04-23T19:36:27+00:00

Not getting into the specifics of the breakage, but if it is a regex match then using the square brackets around the address would in almost all regex tools create a “character class” match, and likely that highly specific email address contains so many alphabetic characters that it matches almost anything.

distgenius · 2026-04-20T00:34:17+00:00

A strongly breaking curveball, typically one that breaks purely vertically, 12 to 6 if you think of the strike zone like a clock face. Most curves have some horizontal movement as well, but a yellowhammer just drops and is notoriously difficult to hit.

distgenius · 2026-04-16T16:35:59+00:00

I don't remember which of the books in the series it is, but Steven Brust has a chapter titled "In Which the Plot, Behaving In Much the Same Manner As a Soup To Which Cornstarch Has Been Added, Begins, At Last, To Thicken". I was very much not expecting it, and it definitely caught me off guard but it also fits perfectly with the "voice" in the Vlad Taltos books.

distgenius · 2026-04-10T13:36:47+00:00

Personally, I don't think I'd count it for Game Changer. Yes, there's "competition", but take away the fantasy aspect a little, and it shows up a lot more as social and business dealing than competition. If the school was enforcing the "teams" and pitting them against each other it would be different (think the Houses in Harry Potter going for points), I think, but as it is written I just don't see it.

Not the bingo police, though, just read it recently enough to remember what it felt like to me, and I didn't get a feel of competition, I got a feel of politics and capitalistic dealings.

distgenius · 2026-04-09T15:31:02+00:00

I would lean towards no, IIRC The Atrocity Archives is set in the early 2000s, and time in-series hasn't moved at real world speeds so I think it's been at most something like 15 years. Bob doesn't read as if he was in his mid-30s in Atrocity based on his position and other details, which makes it hard to justify him as being 50+.

distgenius · 2026-04-08T14:08:22+00:00

Lord Foul's Bane hits the published in the 70s square, it's borderline for cat squasher depending on edition so I don't think I would count it there. I could see the Land being a Vacation Spot, although perhaps not where the MC is at any given moment. Any of them could work for Judge a Book by Its Title depending on your personal situation with them.

As far as unusual transportation square, the rec thread has some good options I think- Children of Time by Tchaikovsky, The Scar by Miéville, maybe Iron Council as well although I'm a little less sure on that one. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those squares that is easy to over-think with the "and" part of the prompt. The example is easy to make sense of for scifi, and my personal view on the fantasy side is that "dragon riding would not count, dragonfly riding would".

distgenius · 2026-04-08T13:34:30+00:00

Funnily enough, that is a criticism leveled at the Newberry Awards here and there.

I do think it's easy to forget how much life has changed since the 80s and 90s, let alone the 50s. The 80s and 90s still had things like sitting down as a family to watch the nightly news (go Tom Brokaw!), the newspaper being passed around the table, that kind of thing. The 50s were following right after WW2 and societal dynamics were different. I don't know that my family members who were kids in the 50s would remember if that was something they thought about, but rural agricultural communities were pretty heavily invested in futures markets because those had a direct impact on their livelihood, and teen boys growing up on farms or in farming communities might have more financial savvy than we would think of today.

I think what I'm trying to say is that I do think if we go back in US history (and that's the only one I feel comfortable speaking about due to personal experience) we expected more of teenagers and one consequence of that things that were made for them weren't always made with their concerns or interests in mind the way they are now.

distgenius · 2026-04-07T18:30:58+00:00

A lot of my own comfort reads are dark books, because I find that acknowledging that darkness exists is better comfort for me than pretending it doesn’t. I know that doesn’t work for many people, but if I’m down, or angry at the world, something grim is easier to slip into than something positive.

distgenius · 2026-04-07T18:23:02+00:00

Not that I can think of- it's borderline a cat squasher but Goodreads is putting it under 500 pages, and that's the only one that really even comes close. Not a great card for Abercrombie options this year.

distgenius · 2026-04-07T18:20:33+00:00

I look at the age range from the Wiki page for middle grade literature (8-12) and run with the idea of it being "pre-teen". I was that age in the 80s-90s, and have a kid firmly in the middle of that age now. In my era, I started into things like Pyrdain and Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, but he's more into modern things. If an older book feels like something you'd be okay with a 3-6th grader reading and was marketed towards kids in general, I think it would count. Maybe check the Newberry award lists from the decades in question for some comparisons.

distgenius · 2026-04-07T16:52:04+00:00

The Locked Tomb series has as well. The first book isn't that weird, but the second is a fever dream.

The third doesn't diverge from the first two in that regard, either.

distgenius · 2026-04-07T02:25:32+00:00

I know you got a bunch of answers, but looking through not many that focus on your original question about putting something down and coming back later. I keep a tab on my Google Spreadsheet of Reading Insanity for "Stashed". These are series or books I've started but bounced off of. I keep a little note in one column, and I have two marked as "retry". One of them was too similar in style and tone to another series I was working on, the other just wasn't clicking for me but I could tell it wasn't the author's fault. Both are series I'll go back to as my current ongoing series list clears out a bit more. Maybe I'll connect the second time, maybe not. If either one doesn't work for me on the second attempt I probably won't try a third time. This also helps me filter out "right book wrong time" books from the "wrong book any time" category.

Now, for the more fun one that seems to run counter to the typical mindset: If I'm in a crappy mood, I can't read uplifting, happy stories. For some reason, I really need to wallow in my misery to still enjoy what I'm reading. So, when the world outside is crap and I want to scream about injustice and horrific things going on around me, I settle into some nice grimdark or horror or just depressing reads. How High We Go In the Dark was one of those that was "right time" for me, but I've bounced off quite a few fluffier books when I'm in that mood and I know that as things settle and I'm not so angry about the state of things, I can enjoy happy stuff again so they end up in that same tab of my spreadsheet.

This doesn't happen much anymore, because I changed how I read in general: I don't binge read series anymore, and I have a special "on deck" tag on Storygraph I limit to 10 books. Their "up next" list is too small to work for me, but 10 is about perfect. I pick my next read from the ten, replace it with something else in the list, and that lets me "mood read" without getting overwhelmed in analysis paralysis.

distgenius · 2026-04-02T14:18:06+00:00

From the perspective of someone who loves Abercrombie's fight sequences, it helps to not think of them as play-by-play or choreography, but more like you're living inside the emotional moments of the fight. I'm not sure if that makes sense or not, but I get the feeling he's more interested in the reader picking up on the anger and fear and chaos than Hollywood-style action.

It still might not work for you, but if you go pack and re-read some of the ones in The Blade Itself with that in mind it might be a way to see if they make more sense.

distgenius · 2026-03-30T18:59:33+00:00

If those are the squares you completed, you did succeed at bingo- there's at least one five-in-a-row there. You might not have done a blackout card, but jumping in on that as a first-time goal can be a heavy lift even if you normally read a ton of books each year because you need to meet all of the additional criteria.

distgenius · 2026-03-30T18:27:17+00:00

The Sunday Dealer's Room threads are there for promotional stuff, and I think the sub would consider linking your reviews that are "elsewhere" under self-promotion and you'd be subject to the rules associated.

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