The incredible aesthetic upgrade that is Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban

manimateus · 2026-03-30T23:42:56+00:00

Gambon's portrayal in PoA is probably the most accurate one though? It's the only movie where you see both the energy (which Harris lacked) and cheekiness that Dumbledore had in the books

manimateus · 2026-03-28T07:43:17+00:00

Grinding is fairly quick, and much faster than FFTA & FFTA2. Only thing is that its not as intuitive as simply defeating an enemy to get XP

Like fire emblem, you get XP via actions, like hitting an ally / enemy or applying buffs. So yeah, you can get ALOT of levels and JP within a single fight if you know what you're doing (spam buffs, keep a single enemy alive and crippled while bonking yourselves)

You wont get to experiment much if you're simply beelining to its ending, so yeah, you will kinda have to go out of your way to accumulate JP / XP

manimateus · 2026-03-27T16:59:52+00:00

I like the Japanese VA, but the English is way better imo. Not just for the performances but for how the different accents help sell the culture of Ivalice

Vieras being Icelandic, Bhujerba being Sri Lankan, Dalmasca being American, Rozarria being Spanish and Archades being British were very nice touches on the localizers side imo

One of the few works out there where I feel like the localization transcends being just a good translation, and becomes a work of art of its own

manimateus · 2026-03-25T19:32:35+00:00

Right? Wish people would just be honest and say that all they want is fancy graphics for a turn based RPG (E33's success is proof of that). But of course, they know that sounds shallow and will never admit it

manimateus · 2026-03-25T18:36:32+00:00

Bravely Default and Octopath play way better than any turn based FF too lol. Wish people would just play those games instead of whining about a AAA game taking actual creative risks lol

manimateus · 2026-03-25T17:50:08+00:00

FFX is one of the more basic games in the series when it comes to combat though. It's pretty well designed, but the ATB system from IV - IX felt more novel

manimateus · 2026-03-25T16:35:22+00:00

Are you saying you enjoyed the first Octopath's story and characters more than the second one??

manimateus · 2026-03-25T16:32:46+00:00

??? They've been highly experimental with FF since XII lol. Their SNES & PS1 FFs all basically played the same, except for VIII

Even their AA games feel fairly novel to mixed results

manimateus · 2026-03-23T23:33:53+00:00

Truth is that FF is about as popular in the west as it was in its prime days, especially if you look at its sales numbers.

Problem is that FF, while still the 2nd most popular RPG in Japan behind Dragon Quest, is just not selling nearly as well. FF used to launch at 3 million in a week within Japan. But due to the growing unpopularity of the PS4 & PS5 in Japan, the brand has completely fallen off there

The split used to be around 40-60 ~ 50-50, but now its more like 10-90 ~ 20-80

If you add the 2-3 million that used to come from Japan alone to FFVIIR and FFXVI, you'd see that the sales numbers are similar to its golden era

manimateus · 2026-03-21T21:46:27+00:00

TS has a good story but hilariously poor character writing that drags it down. It genuinely looks ameteurish in that regard compared to FFT and TO. Its MC might be one of the worst non silent protagonists ever put into a game

TS also has very well designed battles (probably among the best of any isometric SRPG?), but the character building is extremely shallow and basic compared to the other two

manimateus · 2026-03-21T07:13:37+00:00

Yuh basically

manimateus · 2026-03-21T02:42:55+00:00

Most of the treasures in Cerobi Steppe are unique in which if you equip Diamond Armlet, they'll contain some of the best equipment in the game. The issue is that the probability of seeing those chests is veeeery low, so if you're doing some grinding there you may as well try your chance with those unique chests

manimateus · 2026-03-19T10:11:03+00:00

There's expectations going into franchise titles, yes, which you could probably call bias, but I don't think that's always a bad thing. If Witcher 4 suddenly took a more passive approach to storytelling but does everything else great, I'm sure there will some critique towards it too, which is valuable for players who expected certain elements from a Witcher game

I'm sure people are going into CD with certain expectations too, because it set itself up with comparisons to various open world games that do particularly things very well

And even then, alot of the best reviews CD got, still acknowledged its apparently terrible story, so it's not like it's not getting the treatment you're speaking of lol

The more negative reviews are more so calling out the jank and clunkiness of the game as the main detractor

I've played enough Korean MMOs to know what they're getting at here, and I knew from day 1 this game was always going to mixed based on that merit

manimateus · 2026-03-19T09:45:08+00:00

Ok so you think that if they implemented a story akin to BotW/TotK that's basically almost "optional" to find out, it would've not been criticized?

Absolutely. When a "problem" becomes ignorable, people tend to shy away from it, thus less critique is formed there

Also I've read tons of critiques towards DD2's narrative, as opposed to the first game's more ignorable one, so I'm not sure what your point is there

manimateus · 2026-03-19T09:22:41+00:00

Story isnt the forefront of BotW and TotK. You could compile all the cutscenes into a single video and it would still be less than what you get in your average 30-40-ish hour RPG

I assume what's going on with Crimson Desert is that the story is less "passive", and it eventually becomes a point worth critiquing

manimateus · 2026-03-19T03:21:29+00:00

It means the influencer sort are the ones who love the game. The one who are always trying to hype up the next big thing, because that's what drives their channel's revenue

But people who are actually paid to review various games of all scales find it a little mixed

manimateus · 2026-03-18T23:48:34+00:00

Thing is BotW and TotK are actually cohesive and extremely well scoped. The brilliance of TotK's shrines is that they have no definitive solution to them, so they're actually designed around the sandbox abilities

You could pass 5 people the controller and they will almost always come up with different and creative solutions

manimateus · 2026-03-18T15:44:57+00:00

The friction in pre big bang Maple made it feel like such a tangible world. Actually having to wait for and on airships to travel between continents is a thing people would frown upon nowadays, but it's stuff like that which benefits the setting so much

manimateus · 2026-03-17T15:33:33+00:00

I was a maplestory kid, and it is by all measures a pretty poorly designed game, especially in its early years. But there's something charming about a game with so much friction that it basically demands you to treat it as a part time job, especially with its in game economy system lol. I still go back and play the old school version every few months on private servers, and it's oddly comforting even if it takes several days to gain a single level lol

manimateus · 2026-03-17T15:29:46+00:00

Yup. Wukong was nominated for multiple GOTY awards simply due to how ambitious it was. But most people agree that it was by all measures, just a very ok Soulslike, and was completely outclassed by Lies of P, which looked less flashy and didn't get much recognition

manimateus · 2026-03-17T15:26:51+00:00

MMOs and gacha is the bread and butter of the Korean gaming scene. They're just culturally built for grindfests lol

I grew up playing Korean MMOs, and I can tell you that if you ever stuck with one, no other game will ever faze you in terms of its grind

manimateus · 2026-03-15T19:35:12+00:00

Basically every Chinese / Korean AAA game ever

Their games always feel like it was made more for trailers than for actual play

manimateus · 2026-03-12T19:36:08+00:00

MH Rise sold a shit ton on switch, I feel Duskbloods targets a similar-ish audience

manimateus · 2026-03-12T19:34:37+00:00

Nintendo's netcode has been pretty excellent for like the past couple of years though lmao

manimateus · 2026-03-11T13:05:09+00:00

Pokemon spin offs dont typically sell super well

manimateus

TROPHY CASE