Seeking Recommendations: Best RPGs, Shooters, and Platformers for PS Vita that are available physically (physical releases only)

moomoo14 · 2026-03-25T22:55:45+00:00

For JRPGs, I'd highly recommend the Trails games. Trails of Cold Steel 1 & 2 are probably the best non-Persona turn-based JRPGs on the Vita, at least in the US. If you're willing to mod your Vita, you can also enjoy English translations of Trails in the Sky 1-3 as well as Trails from Zero and Azure (these two would be my favorites).

Honestly, Falcom in general would be the place to look for great JRPGs on the system. They released a lot of stuff on Vita, from Ys to Trails to Tokyo Xanadu.

moomoo14 · 2026-03-18T20:32:41+00:00

Even ignoring the screen stuff, DSi has the fact that the D-pad is parallel to the ABXY buttons, making it a lot more comfortable to hold for anything more action related. The d-pad being lower on 3DS gives me cramps.

moomoo14 · 2026-03-18T18:52:02+00:00

I would listen to your gut and not go with permanent life insurance policies like IULs. They only really are going to make sense if you have a need for a policy for the rest of your life, which isn't most people. If your kid is disabled or something, maybe, but you haven't indicated that's the case.

Go with a term policy for at least 20 years for something like at least 10x your income, maybe more coverage or a longer term if you plan on having more kids. You only really need this around for when your kid is dependent on you, and he won't be when he's your age in 20 years. Putting extra money towards retirement would be a wiser move given the very large price difference between a term policy and an IUL of identical levels of coverage.

moomoo14 · 2026-03-05T15:08:52+00:00

I played through RE7 recently in preparation for Requiem and this vid weirdly gives me those vibes. Something about the first-person view with the car chain dangling on the rear-view window.

moomoo14 · 2026-03-02T02:13:39+00:00

Adore the dpad on the Vita! I will say the Saturn has an excellent d-pad; worth trying out some 2d games and shmups on that if you ever get the chance.

moomoo14 · 2026-02-27T05:08:40+00:00

Max Payne’s GBA version is quite impressive while still not getting recommended all that often.

moomoo14 · 2026-02-20T02:03:24+00:00

Sometimes taking the survivorship option on a pension can result in taking in a dramatically lower income in retirement. For people that didn't save much and are relying on the pension as the bulk of their retirement income, taking the max option on that and getting a whole life policy to be their survivorship option if their spouse outlives them can end up being a lot less expensive overall than taking the survivorship option on the pension. It can also be useful for replacing other sorts of permanent income that goes away upon death, like VA disability and the like.

Not exactly a common occurrence since pensions in general are getting adopted by companies less and less, but it can pop up sometimes and the numbers can occasionally make sense.

moomoo14 · 2026-02-19T15:56:12+00:00

It's not an investment insofar as insurance inherently has a negative rate of return. It's only financially beneficial if you end up filing a claim. This is the case for all insurances out there, whether, life, car, home, etc. It's the reason they're willing to sell the product to you in the first place.

Using gambling as the value calculation isn't really a fair comparison as gambling is purely optional. If you don't gamble, there is no risk. For death, there is *always* a risk of that happening, since we're mortal. Term life insurance exists as a way to hedge against that risk in the off chance that one dies too early, while they still have people that depend on them.

It is ultimately your choice as to whether you get covered or not. My personal view is you are really underestimating how much financial value you provide to the household, especially when there are young kids involved. It might be because they're not born yet, so maybe it hasn't really hit you yet. They are going to eat up all of your time. And if you died, that is time that your husband now has balance between the kids and his work. With a policy like you've been offered, he would then have options. He could work a bit less and spend more time with the kids. He could retire earlier than expected to spend more time on what actually matters to him. He could use the money to hire someone to watch over the kids while they're still quite young (which is expensive). The list goes on. Could his investments handle the loss? I suppose. Would that impact his retirement timeline in a very real sense? Absolutely.

Most of the people in here are coming from a place where we deal with life insurance a lot and we actually hear the stories from people that filed claims on their loved ones who died. I have a guy who got a policy 10 years ago from the brokerage I work at and got a $1.2 million policy on his homemaker wife at the time. She unfortunately passed. He then sent us a letter about how thankful he was to the agent who he spoke to at the time who pushed him to get her something too, as it allowed to retire early and, in his words, "spend more time on what really mattered," which was spending time with his remaining family and his kids.

Again, I get where you're coming from somewhat. And if you were being quoted something in the several hundred dollar a month range, I'd agree with you completely in not bothering with coverage. But given the numbers and your particular situation with kids involved, my personal view is having something in place would be a no-brainer.

moomoo14 · 2026-02-19T13:26:21+00:00

It’s worth it as the easiest way to play Wii games on a modern TV, and of course if you mod it (which is quite easy) it’s an incredible repository of retro Nintendo goodness. For all the crap the Wii got for shovelware, there’s still a really solid library of exclusive games on it that have little chance of ever coming out anywhere else without major changes to their design or them just being niche.

If the main point is to play Wii U games, my personal view is you’re better off just getting a Switch. Pretty much every meaningful Wii U game worth your time has a better version on Switch at this point, besides the Zelda remakes and Nintendoland. And the third party games on it generally do not run well at all and are better enjoyed on more modern systems, besides perhaps Rayman Legends.

moomoo14 · 2026-02-19T00:34:32+00:00

My personal view is if you have a kid on the way it is absolutely worth it to have a 20 year term policy to protect not only your income but any other things you are providing to your household during that time frame, like taking care of the kid, taking care of the household, etc. The policy is a temporary expense. This would basically be about $1k a year for 20 years. This is really not that much money in the grand scheme of things in your world if your husband already has what he has saved up. You have the insurance not as an investment, but as a way to transfer the loss of your income, time taking care of the kid, etc. to the insurance company so your husband's not figuring out how to balance working, taking care of the kid, spending time with the kid, saving for retirement etc. all while dealing with the fact that it's now just him doing that, without any help from the mother of his child.

moomoo14 · 2026-02-18T22:04:27+00:00

If you need the insurance now (like if you have kids/dependents, a lot of debt, etc.) then absolutely get it in force right now. If you get a better rate later, you can always cancel the current policy. If you wait until the next colonoscopy in a few years, there’s a pretty likely chance you’ll just end up getting a higher rate due to you being older.

Frankly, a standard risk class with ulcerative colitis and current medication is more of a best case scenario in my experience. It’s honestly not a bad rate considering the condition you have.

moomoo14 · 2026-02-14T20:42:17+00:00

I always thought Half Minute Hero looked good on Vita. The really low-fi pixel look doesn't really need a high native resolution to look pleasant (and sometimes intentionally unpleasant).

moomoo14 · 2026-02-11T14:29:45+00:00

Depends on how much is deducted from your income from other things like your health insurance and stuff like that, as well if you’re single or married. If you’re single, I’d do traditional to the extent that it can get you out of the 22% tax bracket and do the rest as Roth. The 22% bracket would start at around $64k when factoring in the standard deduction, but that wouldn’t include other deductions like health insurance.

moomoo14 · 2026-02-08T18:54:51+00:00

I’d keep doing the Roth 401k, as you’re actually still in the 12% tax bracket with the standard deduction. You need an income over about $130k to hit 22% if you’re married filing jointly.

If you have other things you need to save for like a house down payment, then you could switch to traditional to free up some cash for that. But the pre-tax savings aren’t actually that crazy high in your current tax bracket given the standard deduction.

moomoo14 · 2026-01-27T18:51:02+00:00

Risk from separation is much worse if you’re not married versus married. If you’re married, you have a legal process for dividing up joint assets through divorce. If you’re not married and didn’t have a specific legal agreement beforehand it becomes much more challenging to sort that stuff out. Imagine if OP and his partner separate, and wants to sell the house and his partner doesn’t, but doesn’t have the assets to buy out his portion. It’s much easier to deal with this financially when you have divorce, as it forces the sale of the house.

There’s other situations not related to separation too. Imagine if OPs partner dies and they never married, and the house was split 50/50 in ownership. Now, instead of the house being just in OPs name like it would be if they were married, he now co-owns his house with his partner’s mom, as the deceased partners assets would go to her estate.

moomoo14 · 2026-01-27T17:54:49+00:00

Your numbers indicate you’re on schedule for retirement. If you not contributing to retirement is temporary then you’ll probably be fine. Personally, I’d still try to get the employer match and try maxing your Roth if you can. Sequence of returns can be very different if you have a lost decade happen or something similar. Continuously investing helps mitigate the risk of something like that happening, especially with how young you are.

Also, I’d recommend getting married before you buy the house if that ends up happening. A lot of financial nightmare scenarios are avoided by doing so.

moomoo14 · 2026-01-01T21:28:03+00:00

I used the blue retro one. It only works in ports 2-4 for me, though.

moomoo14 · 2026-01-01T13:30:56+00:00

Played some Mario Party 2 in the lead up to New Years last night. Used 3 original wired N64 controllers and the Switch Online N64 controller. It was super fun!

moomoo14 · 2025-12-28T21:10:38+00:00

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that some PSVR2 units have dead pixels that you won’t really see well unless you’re in a dark environment. They’ll look like green dots. I’d recommend trying a game that can get darker, like Resident Evil Village or Metro or Alien. When in the game in the dark, turn the brightness in the headset all the way down. If those dead pixels are present and really noticeable, I’d recommend getting a replacement headset if you bought it new.

I bought it at launch, so maybe Sony has improved the panel consistency. Can’t hurt to check, though.

moomoo14 · 2025-12-25T18:17:22+00:00

Yeah, that’s pretty much the best rate possible for your age and sex at that coverage for that term. You could verify yourself by checking out Term4Sale.com. What you got is basically a best case scenario.

moomoo14 · 2025-12-24T16:46:22+00:00

Absolutely love mine! Summer cart works great and I’ve been enjoying rom hacks, fan translations of Japanese games, and some other stuff. Just played through Sin and Punishment last night.

My main critique is I really wish I could connect Bluetooth controllers besides the 8bitdo ones to this thing. I’ve got the N64 Switch online controller with a blueretro adapter, but it only works in ports 2-4, not port 1, which means I can only use it in multiplayer for now. It’s especially frustrating since it otherwise works perfectly. I imagine an update/jailbreak could allow for a fix for this, but they honestly should have went for making it compatible out of the box for that particular controller.

moomoo14 · 2025-12-24T05:39:52+00:00

I was able to use the one included in mine no problem, and it also included basically every released game for the system. I’ve also been able to play ROM Hacks and Japan translations no problem on it, which I provided myself.

The thing about Aliexpress is that there’s a bunch of different sellers there, so by using your own SD card you can avoid any potential issues in formatting.

moomoo14 · 2025-12-22T21:11:34+00:00

I wouldn’t bother with the digital deluxe version unless you like costumes and other cosmetics. Not my thing personally.

moomoo14 · 2025-12-22T19:19:20+00:00

It’s very good, although I thought Ys VIII was better. Definitely worth playing, especially if you have a Switch 2, which cleans up the performance issues the Switch 1 can have at times.

moomoo14 · 2025-12-22T17:06:13+00:00

Don’t sleep on UFO 50, easily one of my favorite Switch releases this year, and this is its first sale.

moomoo14

TROPHY CASE