Rine

Krafton is a self-proclaimed “AI-first” company so do not touch this slop when it comes out

nobody posted the clip anywhere so i went and dug the whole episode up

Screenshot of Dragon Quest IV on a cave tileset with a lot of water, showing the party of Taloon and the two random guys he paid to follow him into the cave.

Second dungeon time, after some back and forth around several towns. Gotta get money for the shop to buy, so that means finding a super valuable item. A bit surprised there's no cheevo for doing it without the statue, but that would just be a silly grind tbh. Also, NPC-ass party with my two mercs.

I feel any date with Hideo Kojima would be the most autism-coded thing ever, in a positive way. Yes Kojima, please infodump about whatever weird thing you're looking up these days.

Its so wierd how the game waffles between 'You only control the main character' to 'You have direct control over your entire party' to 'Oops, only main character again' to 'Okay, main two plus random dude' to 'Only the hero, and vague instructions for all the guys you directly controlled before'

Yeah, in the later chapters they have tactical control over your other characters, and Healie (plus the two soldiers you can hire as Taloon) should have let you do that for them. If you're gonna introduce systems slowly, that would have been a great chance to use it to tell Healie 'Focus on heals!'

We gotta pump those numbers up, more people need to see your cool (if that's a thing you want that is)

Screenshot of Dragon Quest IV, depicting the character pushing a rock onto a panel.

So this is optional for a nice item, but guess who fucked up the puzzle here, and the only solution is to just hard reset the game and load from your last save? Not even die to an encounter to get kicked back to it? Yuuup....bad design. Period. Had to grind back up and come back all over again.

Yup, we're working on a new Castlevania game.

Thanks to KONAMI, & with Motion Twin's friendly advice, the franchise will be going back to its roots with what we hope to be the best whip traversal & combat ever seen in a 2D action-adventure game! Noooo pressure...

www.konami.com/games/castle...

Its like the merchant class in DQ3, like, you can see potentially how its useable, but when your other options are characters who have actual abilities that help in combat, 'better drop rates' isn't really a selling point, so when the full lineup comes around I don't recall ever using him.

Screenshot of a random encounter with a merchant in Dragon Quest IV, showing a sprite of a character smoking a pipe with a bag, the text reading "Buy/Sell/Exit" with the NPC saying "This is an item shop! What would you like to do?"

Taloon also has notable differences in playing his start than others, because you have to do the store bit for a while to get any gear to survive, then only do a bit of leveling. Most monsters end up dropping gear upgrades for him quite often, extras you can sell, and he has random shop encounters.

If Mewgenics was art for an article.

oh my god??

Including disabled people in our utopian futures pushes back against a eugenicist ideal.

final fantasy xv screenshot with the party including Greblin on a gondola in a venetian-adjacent fantasy city.

Greb went to Venice!

Greb is no longer allowed in Venice!

I feel like this guy was very popular in Japan for some reason considering he got his own spin-off game. I mean, not as popular as the twins from later for NSFW reasons, but yaknow. The shop stuff here also feels like it influenced gamedevs later to do the whole Recettear thing.

Screenshot of Dragon Quest IV, showing a bedroom and kitchen in the NES tileset, with the character Taloon in the middle, a purple sprite wearing a backpack.

Taloon time, the merchant character who uhm...is the merchant, and after his story you'll probably never use him, because he's a merchant. I remember his being the biggest struggle because he's solo -and- he sucks at combat. Also there's a gold grind so he can buy his shop.

Screenshot of a fight against Linguar, a purple yeti-like creature that has split into four identical copies.

Also 'This enemy splits into four mirror images, and attacking the wrong one wastes the attack, so he then does it again so you have a 1/4 chance of actually hitting him, and no options to hit multiples or figure out which is which' is basically making the last fight entirely RNG.

Screenshot of a battle screen in Dragon Quest IV showing the menu and a single opponent, a green armored knight named Sampson.

The only thing about this final tournament bit to end the chapter is because you can only use Alena, all she can do is attack and use medical herbs. There really is no tactics to it, so if you don't win, it just means you need to level up more, there was nothing you could have done differently.

Screenshot of a Dragon Quest IV enemy which is a scimitar with a grin, yellow eyes, and little fists on his blade.

Ahh, one of my favorite NES monster sprites, the little sword guys with their little fists.

Tempted to get myself that RA Brigandine badge now, been ages since I played it.

Dino Crisis on Steam Raw Instinct takes over in this new, adrenaline-pumping journey into Survival Horror. Something is terribly wrong. Your covert mission has gone haywire… now you find yourself pursued by a relentless, ...

Dino Crisis is on Steam?! :o

Wait, a new Brigandine game? wtaf?

See, I wouldnt have been -surprised- Tennapple was in there.

Cantrip by ¡Hipólita! In which young witches get into immense trouble every single day of their lives.

Apropos of nothing in particular, people should check out Cantrip by @hipolita.itch.io for all their magical school TTRPG needs

hipolita.itch.io/cantrip

Ahh, I see the cat eugenics games voice cast has even deeper sets of horrible people than I thought.

Gaddahm I also followed the quoted account in the post. This was the second time I unknowingly reposted generated AI pixel slop. Fuck AI

Ginger sits beside Spiced on the sofa. Spiced is reading, slightly out of focus in the background. Ginger looks away with a frown, distracted, surrounded by their internal monologue of multiple voices. "So hungry..." "You've seen what these people do to voidsent..." "You don't really think you're helping, do you?" "You're a facinating little freak, ain't 'ya?" "Why are you even here?" "Need aether..." "She'll drop you as soon as you stop bein' interestin'" "What's the point of being surrounded by so much aether if ya won't even taste it?" "I'm sure she'd taste wonderful..." "You're nothing but a burden" "Just a little taste wouldn't hurt~""Normal food just don't hit the same" "We used to be so strong, now look at us" "Would she even notice?" "What's with playing at being a normal person?" Ginger's thoughts are overlaid on top. "...Shut up." "She's not like that." "Stop it!"

The surrounding scene fades as Ginger becomes absorbed in their thoughts, not noticing that Spiced has looked up from her book. They have a noticable grimace on their face, their eyes squeezed shut. Yet more voices cluster into the previous cachophony; "kehehehe, touched a nerve, did we?" "You really are pathetic" ""We should go back... the first opportunity we get." "If only she knew what it's like inside out head..." "She'd prefer it that way." "You're cute when you're mad~" "Could we at least feast first...? The aether here is so succulent..." "This would be so much easier if you never came to the Source..." "Do you think she'd hate you? or would she run?" "Hey! are you even listening?" "You always were the weakest of us..." Ginger's thoughts are once again overlaid. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" "Enough!" "I didn't fucking ask you!" "I'm sick of your constant yapping!"

Spiced scoots closer and takes Ginger's hand. They look up with surprise; the scene is brightened and in focus, and the voices are gone. Ginger: "uh-" "...oh" Spiced: "Hey." "Are you feeling okay? You look a little stressed."

Ginger looks at their hands with a relieved smile. "...yeah. I'm okay."

Silence is your favourite sound when you aren't alone in your head.

YouTube video by Olive Lancer Tactics Debut Trailer

Two Lancer Tactics news items:
1. We have a debut trailer! Critics (disclosure: me) are saying it's the best game trailer to ever be made??
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GywP...

Fuck dude, that's a bad cough. I know they can't really 'reset' ribs, but hopefully it doesn't get worse.