u/Traingham

I feel like Anis has been the most blatantly written character out of the Counters to have feelings for the commander. In the main story she’s definitely been the most possessive or quick to react whenever a new Nikke attempts to flirt with him within earshot or line of sight—and that’s the early chapters.

I just wrapped up the Crow arc.

After years of waiting for the reveal of what the next gen Final Fantasy on the PS3 would look like in motion—after scraping at screenshots and short clips of prototype footage, the trailer for FFXIII was pretty damn hype.

Haven’t seen that one in a while, but it still hits me right in the chest with how well put together it is. Cutting trailers is truly an art.

The way it all goes down, it almost feels like Ridley chooses to torment her life specifically because she has the goodness to try and befriend him despite his obviously evil design.

This would explain the shadow drop of, uh, Shadow of the Tomb Raider on the Switch 2. I wasn’t expecting to see that pop up in the store without announcement.

Though, I suppose the same thing happened with the previous two.

For a second, I thought this was an enemy from Blasphemous. This is pretty rad.

Medusas

Speaking as someone who loved the original release enough to buy it on the PS5 and the Steam Deck (and went through the trouble of finding a tutorial to get the PC version running at 60fps on the Steam Deck so that it was actually a playable experience long before Capcom finally decided to give it some TLC), I’m just going to talk about my experience on the Switch 2 so far—because I purchased it a third time.

The fact that they managed to get the game running so smoothly on the Switch 2 is an absolute joy. There’s pop in of characters and objects at times, but unless you’re doing as side by side of the PS5 version and the Switch 2 version for your whole experience, I can’t say I find the visuals lacking. It’s still a gorgeous game, and the gameplay is intact.

The quality of life additions are appreciated. The eternal ferry stone makes mining for ore a more appealing chore than before, though I don’t find myself bothering with oxcarts as much as a result, so I might just scale back my usage of the stone so it doesn’t end up making the world feel smaller.

The addition of two extra slots for skills feels like they gave me two extra arms to smack enemies with. Feels good, and I’m more inclined to mess around with skills I wouldn’t bother slotting in before. I heard they also improved the intelligence of the pawns as well, but I couldn’t really tell you if that’s factually true. My pawn has always felt dependable for me, but I suppose I’ll see it put to the test later when I reach Bahkbattahl.

Looking forward to unlocking transmog, and the Dark Arisen content in the future. I heard the gameplay loop is pretty satisfying in the new content.

Only had enough time this morning to work my way to the first save mirror of the game, and so far I like the movement, the enemies (just the skeleton archers at this point) can catch you with some twitchy attacks if you’re not timing your approaches, but the back dash serves its utility well enough—and the music for the opening area is good. Not sure if it gets bland later, but the opening area has a good introductory melody.

It’s not standard fare for the series, but divorced from what you would expect from the older titles, I didn’t find it lacking.

This feels a bit early for Ghidorah to show up. Kind of feels like if Link walked out of Kokiri Village after getting the ocarina from Saria, and Ganondorf was just standing outside having a smoke.

Seeing X run up on a log cabin kinda fucked me up, and I’m not sure why.

All of the Ultimecia phase changes are pretty good in the final battle of Final Fantasy VIII, but the reveal of her ultimate form with the haunting chant of “Fithos lusec wecos vinosec” (fantastic moment to watch with headphones) is an absolute winner.

—but even much earlier before that would be the whole sharp shooting sequence leading into Squall taking the fight directly to the sorceress in the grand finale of the assassination operation in Deiling City. It’s one of Squall’s best moments, in my opinion.

Jerid Messa never actually becomes a legitimate threat to Kamille Bidan in Zeta Gundam.

A threat to Kamille’s love life and loved ones, yes, but whenever Jerid is facing Kamille himself, not so much. He keeps coming back though.

Until he doesn’t.

2012, huh? Wow, the general look of this show reminds me of Maken-Ki.

Probably animated by the same studio.

I feel like there was an anime show about a decade ago about girls who were guns. Like, each girl was meant to be a gun…but were students at an academy, and…they had an instructor that would teach them to shoot the gun they were meant to be.

Am I having a stroke?

Oooh. I get to build my own Castlevania?

Hey. You found the bush.

Xenoblade Chronicles X has some absolutely gorgeous views—some locations look even grander during certain times of day or highly specific weather conditions.

At the same time, there are locations that look like scenes out of a horror film. Hell, there’s a whole continent in the game that gets covered in a fog of spores so thick that it becomes nearly impossible to tell what might be lurking in the distance. It’s both beautiful and thrilling.

Thanks.

It just made too much sense for a company like Capcom to pass up.

Foid, huh? So that’s why the gender swapped version of Malfoy is being referred to as “Malfoid”.

Learned a thing.

With time, I’ve come to appreciate Ayeka from Tenchi Muyo. She’s actually a great source of comedy in episodes, and she absolutely kills it in the Tenchi in Tokyo season of the series.

Also, the manga just makes her into a truly good character by emphasizing her relationship with Sasami and other members of the royal family more than her infatuation with Tenchi.

Executives stopping Inafune from going through with making X the villain of Megaman Zero, is this for me.

Going the Copy X route was the better choice. It allowed the story to explore a possible fate for X without tarnishing the legacy of the original character.

Let’s talk about all the ways it feels like Pascal can’t ever actually get a good ending in Nier Automata—and some of those ways involve your attempts at mercy.

Clive and Joshua’s mother, Annabella Rosfield, in Final Fantasy XVI.

—To the point that Clive and the players themselves are calling her on her bullshit at a critical point late in the story.

Annabella will put all the blame on Clive and his supposed lacking worthiness, the short sightedness of her political partners, or the servant class for falling short of her needs and expectations, but NEVER herself.

This art is so good that I actually fear for the children.

S’pecially Power.