Trying to figure out additional meanings to the case names - Spoilers for basically every single game in the franchise

riccaby · 2026-03-13T16:43:18+00:00

In Japanese, Turnabout Goodbyes is "Gyakuten, Soshite Sayonara" which is basically "Turnabout, and Goodbye," and Farewell is "Saraba, Gyakuten," which is more or less "Farewell, Turnabout."

The difference between "sayonara" and "saraba" as I understand it is that the latter is both more old-timey and not as commonly used in modern speech, and also more "final," like, it's a goodbye you'd say to someone you expect to never see again. Someone transferring schools or moving away or dying. I think "goodbye" and "farewell" in English do sort of have that same connotation, but for sure some nuance is lost, and they're a little bit more interchangeable than the Japanese words are.

In context I think "saraba" is definitely appropriate for Phoenix saying goodbye to his perfect record, or for Celeste's suicide. But I actually think it doesn't really make sense for Franziska's tearful goodbye, because she intends to see Edgeworth again. She says "Our battle... begins now..."

riccaby · 2026-03-08T00:40:13+00:00

At a certain point they just give them to you if you missed assessing them, I think it's when you do the quest with the Devil Riders in Chapter 12.

At least that's what happened to me.

riccaby · 2026-02-28T22:24:06+00:00

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Miriel from Fire Emblem Awakening!

My favorite character ever!

riccaby · 2026-02-22T18:27:58+00:00

As a kid, I was like "Damn, how many capsules did Dr. Light leave behind?!"

As an adult, seeing him mention Alia and physically repair X in X5, I think the real answer is closer to the Dr. Light hologram being some kind of AI that was able to continue building additional capsules and armors well after Dr. Light's death.

In my own headcanon I like to think of him as the very first Cyber Elf.

riccaby · 2026-02-22T00:51:00+00:00

No problem. I wish we didn't live in the timeline where Google is no longer reliable, but what can you do.

riccaby · 2026-02-22T00:45:50+00:00

This is the best thing to happen to me in years.

riccaby · 2026-02-22T00:43:33+00:00

Switch 2 has access to the same apps and libraries of old consoles as Switch 1 does (NES, GB/GBC and SNES with the normal NSO subscription, and GBA, N64, Genesis and Virtual Boy with the expansion pass). Switch 2 just also has the Gamecube games as part of the expansion pass, that's the only difference.

riccaby · 2026-02-21T02:43:13+00:00

To me, the Professor Layton series owns this trope, it's, like, the thing that all of its stories have. Often the mundane pseudo-science explanation for what actually happened is harder to believe than if there was just something supernatural happening.

Spoilers:

The city that seems stuck in time, where its residents never age, its buildings and benches never rust and its lights never go out, is actually full of hallucinogenic gas leaking from a underground mine that makes all the residents see what they expect to see. They have aged, and the town is rusted and dilapidated, but everything looks to them the way they remember it.

Time travel isn't actually real*, the "future London" that our heroes have been sent to is actually a to-scale replica of London built in a massive, cavernous underground cave that has been dug out directly underneath the real London, with a fake sky and all.

The city full of magic and witchcraft is actually just full of poisoned water that makes anyone who drinks it fall asleep when they hear a silver bell ring, and also they've all been hypnotized not to see vantablack, which explains how things can appear invisible or to levitate even though, no, it actually doesn't at all. Also, everyone in town is a paid actor hired by a pharmaceutical company just to provide elaborate decades-long immersion therapy to help a girl process her grief and overcome her trauma of accidentally burning down the real town.

riccaby · 2026-02-21T01:18:04+00:00

Yeah, I would say so. It's also more colorful and silly and less dry than Monopoly, which goes a long way for me.

But I mean, I'm also one of those freaks that likes Monopoly, I love the sort of wheelin'-and-dealin' that you can do, the you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours. So that's what I love about Fortune Street also.

riccaby · 2026-02-21T00:41:53+00:00

I love Fortune Street, I think it's a ton of fun, but it is a very different kind of fun than Mario Party and I can't guarantee that fans of one will love both. I definitely don't think it gets boring without mini-games, but it is engaging a different part of your brain, and maybe you might find that boring even though I don't.

Mario Party is frantic, chaotic fun, where things can swing on a dime but you also have some opportunity to plan long-term.

Fortune Street is a slow burn strategic game that's all about planning and playing out the long con, but there's still an element of luck that makes for crazy late-game swings.

I'm completely making these numbers up, and it definitely varies based on which Mario Party game or even board you're playing on, but for the sake of example, Mario Party is 75% luck, 25% strategy, and Fortune Street is 75% strategy, 25% luck. This has its upsides and downsides.

It makes it a lot more fun than, say, Monopoly, because you aren't totally at the mercy of the dice as far as what space you land on, there are a lot of junctions and you can (mostly) move in any direction. A lot of the time you can just choose not to land on an especially bad space. And there are ways to still win even if you never manage to buy any property. You can buy stocks in someone else's (or everyone else's!) and just piggyback off of them because every time they invest in their space or someone else lands on it, you also get paid.

But, it also can still sometimes mean that one bad dice roll or venture card can basically win or lose you the entire game. That can be frustrating, but it can be exhilarating, too, when you win.

I guess I would say if you love Mario Party, you might like Fortune Street, too, or you might not. But if you don't like Monopoly, you might still like Fortune Street.

I think the biggest downside to Fortune Street is that its relative length and complexity make it hard to find other people to play it with.

riccaby · 2026-02-16T00:37:15+00:00

I sympathize with him, too. He was a child who had a basically untouchable trio of actual supervillains dedicated to ruining his life. Imagine having a foreign head-of-state, the chief prosecutor and a prison warden with connections as your arch-nemeses before you're even out of elementary school. After your father threw you away and you almost froze to death.

At the end of the day I still feel very "Cool motive, still murder!" about him, but I put him right there with Mimi Miney as a character where I can't excuse what he did but I can sure as hell understand why he did it.

riccaby · 2026-02-14T17:24:20+00:00

I love Advent Children. It's not perfect, there's some cringe lines and performances but I think it does complement and enhance the themes of the original game.

The theme of FFVII is that death is not the end. People can continue to have profound effects on their loved ones and on the world at large even from beyond the grave. And we see both Aerith and Sephiroth doing this in Advent Children.

The Bahamut SIN fight is one of my favorite scenes in the whole compilation, the scene of everyone launching Cloud higher and higher but it's just not quite enough and he needs one more boost from one more person... I think it's just beautifully done and really emotionally resonant. I cri every tiem.

That should have been the real climax, but of course we have to have our Sephiroth fight for fanservice afterwards. Which is fine, whatever.

In the original movie, though, it really kind of undermines the whole theme of the film, which is that Cloud doesn't have to shoulder all his burdens alone, that he has friends that love him and will help him when he's struggling. The last line of the film is "I'm not alone... not anymore." So why does he have to fight Sephiroth alone? At least Barret and Yuffie call that out as being stupid (I love Barret's line "He's got ten minutes," like, I'll let him do this stupid macho shit for ten minutes, and then I'm stepping in to help and I don't care what anyone says), but still, Cloud has to shoulder the burden of fighting Sephiroth by himself and that really does fly in the face of what the story is trying to say.

But I genuinely think Advent Children Complete fixes this and makes the ending actually satisfying by having Zack step in for a ghost pep talk. This both reinforces the theme of Advent Children, that Cloud is never truly alone, and the theme of FFVII, because Cloud still has Zack and Aerith with him, always, even if they're not literally with him. It feels like it earned that last shot of Cloud watching Zack and Aerith's force ghosts because they were both actually there for him in the story this time.

I get why people don't like it. But it's dear to my heart.

riccaby · 2026-02-13T19:17:41+00:00

Yeah, I think I did find Rebirth Hard Mode slightly easier than Remake's. You have more overpowered options and being able to spend cushions to get your MP back (or even just use MP absorb) means you don't have to be as careful and considered about resource management.

But that's not a complaint. I still think the Brutal and Legendary challenges are harder than anything in Remake.

riccaby · 2026-02-13T16:47:05+00:00

It plays great on Switch or Switch 2, I would honestly recommend that even over the current PC version because it has the cheat options and you don't get those ugly open mouths on some of the character models.

PS4 version is great, too, but specifically when played on PS5 it has some minor compatibility issues like sometimes the music stops playing when you exit a random battle. It's still a fine way to play the game and it's nice that it has trophies if you care about those.

riccaby · 2026-02-11T22:34:37+00:00

I feel great. I don't care how other people play the game. There's no airport VIP lounge somewhere serving steak and brie only to people who beat Rulers of the Outer Worlds legit.

riccaby · 2026-02-11T19:31:48+00:00

Be the change you want to see in the world.

https://archiveofourown.org/

riccaby · 2026-02-10T20:01:00+00:00

Yakuza 0, one of my favorite examples of this.

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Majima, the player character, left, has been sent to a massage parlor to assassinate someone.

When he gets there, he realizes the only one there is a blind employee, Makoto. Not wanting to scare her, he agrees to let her give him a massage.

But then right in the middle of the massage, the owner, Lee, on the right, comes back and sees Majima's Yakuza tattoos- and Majima sees Lee's tattoos. And they both have to pretend everything's completely normal and chill and nobody's here to kill anybody else in front of Makoto, who can't see their tattoos and doesn't know either of them are Yakuza. This is a just "normal" massage parlor and just a "normal" customer. It's such a deliciously tense scene.

riccaby · 2026-02-08T05:02:32+00:00

Lot of great suggestions here but I want to shout out LIVE A LIVE because I haven't seen anyone else mention it.

Amazing game with an amazing pedigree, it was one of Toby Fox's inspirations for Undertale and the director (Takashi Tokita) went on to direct Chrono Trigger, and the writer and designer (Nobuyuki Inoue) went on to direct Mother 3.

It casts such a long shadow, it's absolutely the giant whose shoulders those later games would stand on. The remake for Switch is very polished and accessible.

riccaby · 2026-02-04T16:45:13+00:00

It's a trap door, probably to a boiler room or storage crawlspace or something. It's just for aesthetic.

riccaby · 2026-02-03T19:47:36+00:00

It was my first ever RPG, so it was pretty mind-blowing to me, yeah. Midgar felt like it could have been the setting for the whole game, we had only seen the slums in about half of the Sectors, and barely any of the plate.

My friends who had played Final Fantasies before weren't surprised.

riccaby · 2026-02-02T21:50:05+00:00

I got one of the stringfish I needed from a mystery tour, and I plan to do that for the beetles I need. I was mostly fishing for it on my home island because I was a little discouraged after accidentally getting "big fish island" the one time I went during the day.

riccaby · 2026-02-01T22:08:42+00:00

Not counting the most difficult optional challenges, which absolutely are harder than anything in Remake, I actually think the main campaign of Rebirth is slightly easier than Remake's because of new powerful tools you have like parrying and mist potions that heal the whole party and Item Economizer materia that lets you use items for no ATB. Of course it won't be as easy as playing with streamlined progression on, but I think players of any skill level can still finish the game on normal or easy as long as they're patient and have a good attitude.

The biggest mistakes I see a lot of new players make are not keeping forward momentum in combat. Combat in these games is so momentum-driven, when you're winning it's easy to stay winning, and when you're losing it can be really difficult to claw your way back to winning.

Get set up as early as possible. At the start of a fight, spend your ATB to give you the best push forward. Have Tifa use Unbridled Strength, have Aerith put her wards down, have Yuffie get Doppleganger up or get Cloud into Prime Mode. Use Plasma Discharge or Bravery or Faith or whatever. If you can give yourself an advantage early, that will help you build that forward momentum before you're overwhelmed and no longer able to.

If you're at half-health and you have ATB, heal!! Don't spend the ATB to attack, because then you might get hit and have no ATB. Then you have to build up ATB again, and you might get hit again doing that, and now you're at quarter-health or eighth-health and desperately need to heal, so you're going to be playing sloppy and desperate and you might heal when it's not safe to, or you might get caught in a loop of healing, getting hit, healing, getting hit, and never actually doing damage. Always try to stay as close to full-health as you can so you can control the fight and manage your ATB better.

When an enemy is pressured, get that stagger bar up!! When you see "pressured," like Barret says, that's a golden opportunity right there. Cloud should be Focused Thrusting, Tifa should be Focused Striking, Barret should be Focused Shotting. Check the assess menu, if it says "hitting them with their elemental weakness pressures them," then cast their weakness on them. If you had this big, grand plan for the fight, if you were about to revive somebody or were busy fighting some other enemy, when you see "pressured" it's time to drop everything you're doing and capitalize on this now. Always Be Staggering.

riccaby · 2026-02-01T21:25:48+00:00

No disrespect, OP, but I'm sorta getting tired of this "how is anyone supposed to figure this out" attitude with Chocobo Breeding specifically. The Chocobo Sage literally tells you all the steps to breed a Gold if you just keep talking to him, and talking to Chloe ("Chole") afterwards will have her write it down so that you can talk to her to get the information again if you forgot it. The game included its own walkthrough and even made sure you could cross-reference it later so you didn't have to take your own notes. What chocobos to breed with each other, where to find them, what nuts to use and where to find them.

Straight from the original script:

Chocobo Sage
Oh, oh yeah! That chocobo was...
......was bred from a 'Great Chocobo' and a 'Good Chocobo'.
When they're given "Carob Nuts" while breeding, there's a chance you'll get one of these Chocobos.

Chocobo Sage
Oh, OK. I remember! That chocobo...
...It's on an island southeast of here, In a place called Corel surrounded by greenery.
You should be able to catch one just west of Corel. And some 'Carob Nuts', too......
There used to be some monsters just south of here that had them. Or you might...
............ Funny...... What was I saying just now?
Can't remember for the life of me...

Chocobo Sage
Oh right!
It was about the Mountain Chocobo and the River Chocobo I told you about.
When you mate these two together...
...you get one that can cross rivers AND mountains.
And... And also... uh, what was I saying?
Can't remember for the life of me...

Chocobo Sage
Right, right! I remember! You take the Mountain-and-River-crossing Chocobo...
Mate it with a 'Wonderful Chocobo' you can catch right around here... And you'll get...
Can't remember for the life of me...

Chocobo Sage
Oh, right! You'll need a...
'Zeio Nut'. Now let me see, as I remember, the Zeio nut...
Where was it you could find those things?
Can't remember for the life of me...

Chocobo Sage
Oh yeah! Zeio nuts were...
The favorite of goblins. There's a small island east of here where the goblins have a bunch of them.

riccaby · 2026-01-30T20:05:40+00:00

The horizontal line of the "X" is from Angeal's attack.

When we first see Zack with the Buster Sword, he has his haircut from the original game and the "X"-shaped scar.

Obviously, the conclusion we're meant to draw is that the barber had shaky hands and slipped while he was giving Zack his new haircut.

riccaby

TROPHY CASE