I am but a humble Shrimp.

[Moonface]

Whether I like the game, like the characters, like the character art (when it comes to games that offer lots of skins, like Azur Lane), how I like the gameplay, and yes, whether or not I think the game is going to have longevity. That's why I will no longer spend money on Square Enix mobile games, because I cannot trust them not to shut the game down after a year. Same with Bandai Namco mobile games.

What mobile games (if any) have you played by both of those companies?

Revived Witch is the only game I've spent semi-heavily on so far that I'm kind of sus about. The Global version is being published by Yostar once again, so I know it's in good hands when it comes to the publisher. However, its sales have been middling at best so far (around $700,000 in December 2021, combined between Korean, Japanese and Global servers), so there's a bit of worry about the future of this one. Hopefully they stick it out and the game picks up steam, but sadly I could see this game going down within a couple of years if it continues at the pace it's going.

$700,000 seems like a good number to me since that's surely a notable profit for the game still right?

As for that area in Dark Souls 2, it seems a bit annoying at first, but it's actually not that bad. Lifegems pretty much counteract poison, so that becomes a non-factor for the most part. The only big issue with it is if you fall into one of the pits and you don't know the area well, it can be pretty annoying to get your bearings again. Outside of that the area is much better as the poisonous area than Blighttown from Dark Souls or Valley of Defilement from Demon's Souls.

What makes those other two poisonous areas worse? I assume you can't just use the same strategy of consuming something to counteract the poison?

It also helps that the PS5 version of Genshin is better than the PC version, so that gives me more incentive to stay on PS5 mainly as well.

I'm surprised but I guess that's because Genshin on PC is tailored to run on even the lowest hardware at a decent level whereas PS5 can target a single universal hardware?

Also do you care about Steam achievements at all, or is it really just trophies on PlayStation you make a point of going after?

[Dragon Lord]

What mobile games (if any) have you played by both of those companies?

Star Ocean: Anamnesis was the first mobile game I ever played and I absolutely loved it. I was actually very anti-mobile up until that point, and they finally got me by making a mobile game of one of my favorite game series of all-time. I spent a hefty amount of money in the game as well and was having a very good time with it and got myself heavily involved in the community and everything. Then they shut down the game after only a year of service, and the way they went about it was extremely scummy to boot (released a last banner with some very wanted characters on it, went radio silent for a few months after that, and then announced the shutdown after the refund periods were passed for people who spent money on that final banner). This experience with Square Enix and their mobile games was enough to make me never spend money on another SE mobile game again.

Bandai Namco has never burned me in the same way, but they are extremely notorious for closing down their games after just a year or so (especially Global versions of their Tales mobile games). I played Tales of Crestoria and knew that it wasn't gonna be worth sticking with (which I was right, they announced the shutdown a couple of months ago). Then I tried Tales of Luminaria that just released recently and it was absolutely ass, so it just re-confirms my stance of not spending on a Bandi Namco mobile game.

$700,000 seems like a good number to me since that's surely a notable profit for the game still right?

$700K is extremely low for a gacha game, especially one that has service in Japan, Korea, China and the West. If this trend continues with the game, I can see it closing down sooner rather than later, which has made me hesitate on spending any more money on it. The quality of the Global translation is pretty sus too (one of those Google translate quality types). So while you'd think that $700K was fine and dandy, it's actually pretty bad for a mobile game.

What makes those other two poisonous areas worse? I assume you can't just use the same strategy of consuming something to counteract the poison?

Dark Souls only offers an item to heal the poison, but if you don't know where to get it, obviously you're screwed. Other than that, you just have to heal through it, which wastes your Estus and puts you in a bad spot when you really need the healing. The swamp in Blighttown also slows down your movement speed, and the only way to counter that is to find a ring that allows you to move normal speed through it, but the ring is in a place that a lot of players aren't going to find on their first play through most likely. The area also has a very... undesirable first half, if you're coming into from the intended path. Then you get through that and you're met with this poison swamp that makes you slow and, if you're playing on PS3/360 or PTDE on PC, will give you a nice, crisp 2-5 FPS through most of it (though at this point in time, anyone should be playing Dark Souls Remastered, where the FPS problems are mostly fixed).

Valley of Defilement in Demon's Souls is just a very notorious place. The swamp drastically slows you down, the area is huge and 90% of it is spent in the swamp itself, and there's a Black Phantom NPC in the swamp who does insane damage (can 1-2 shot even higher level characters) and is not slowed down by the swamp at all. So while you're slow and unable to dodge roll, the NPC is free to chase you at full speed. It can be an absolute nightmare for anyone who isn't good at parrying. It's also pretty easy to get lost in the swamp on your first play through, and it just ends up making the area more of a headache than anything. Paired up with the fact that there are no checkpoints mid-level in Demon's Souls, if you end up dying towards the end of the area before you open the shortcut, you gotta go through all of it again. It might not necessarily be a hard area to deal with, but it can certainly be draining on one's desire to continue playing the game. Oh, and there's absolutely no way to counter the movement speed decrease in this one.

I'm surprised but I guess that's because Genshin on PC is tailored to run on even the lowest hardware at a decent level whereas PS5 can target a single universal hardware?

It's not because it is tailored to run on lowest hardware, but rather because the PS4 and PC versions of the games are just ports of the mobile version. The PS5 on the other hand had nearly the entire graphic library rebuilt from the ground up with high res textures, and it was optimized specifically to take full advantage of the PS5s hardware. Genshin on my PS5 loads faster than on my computer. Granted not by a whole lot, but loading 1-3 seconds faster on a $500 console vs a $3000 PC says something about how good they made the PS5 port of Genshin (and also how good the PS5s hardware can be).

Also do you care about Steam achievements at all, or is it really just trophies on PlayStation you make a point of going after?

You better believe I do. I just greatly enjoy the fun of getting trophies/achievements and seeing that nice "100%" at the end of it all.

[Moonface]

Star Ocean: Anamnesis was the first mobile game I ever played and I absolutely loved it. I was actually very anti-mobile up until that point, and they finally got me by making a mobile game of one of my favorite game series of all-time. I spent a hefty amount of money in the game as well and was having a very good time with it and got myself heavily involved in the community and everything. Then they shut down the game after only a year of service, and the way they went about it was extremely scummy to boot (released a last banner with some very wanted characters on it, went radio silent for a few months after that, and then announced the shutdown after the refund periods were passed for people who spent money on that final banner). This experience with Square Enix and their mobile games was enough to make me never spend money on another SE mobile game again.

Wow, yeah I wouldn't touch a game by them again after that either, at least not one that asks for money to have any chance of having a decent time with it. I've only played one free-to-play mobile game that shut down on me, but luckily I never felt the need to spend money in the game because it was rather generous with character drops via free currency, but I also suspect that led to it being closed down at the end of last year too. I rarely saw other players that had obviously spent money on the game and most were clearly free players like myself who were happy with the drop rate of free stuff.


On the subject of poison areas in FromSoft games, is there anything other than antidote for Bloodborne and if not, what suggestions do you have for dealing with poisonous areas in that game? I picked it up again the other day and eventually just went around as much poison as I could and ignored anything in it because I just couldn't figure out how not to just instantly run out of antidote or healing potions.

You better believe I do. I just greatly enjoy the fun of getting trophies/achievements and seeing that nice "100%" at the end of it all.

I've never actually got all the achievements in a Steam game but they don't have anything like a Platinum-style achievement right? If not, would you like Steam to add one for getting all other achievements in a game?

[ShiraNoMai]

So guess who's coming to town?!

Going to GDQ this year, and because I'm not insane enough to stay in the main hall and watch every single run 24/7, what're some cool spots around Minneapolis/St. Paul to do? I know there's the Mall of America, but I figured you being from around there would help point us into some fun directions

[Moonface]

Since I've seen you playing it on PS the last few days, what are your thoughts on the Chrono Cross remaster @Dragon Lord?

[Moonface]

So as to not derail the Ghost of Tsushima thread, I'll ask this here in response to your post there:

So in a long and drawn out way of trying to decide what game I wanted to play next after finishing the platinum for Chrono Cross, and random chance has dictated that this game will be my next game, so I guess I'm playing it much earlier than I anticipated after all.

What were the other choices?

[Karo]

Night Lord have you been watching any of this season or last season animes? If so what have been your stand out animes that you really enjoyed?

I really been enjoying Spy X Family and Love After World Domination.

[Dragon Lord]

Star Ocean: Anamnesis was the first mobile game I ever played and I absolutely loved it. I was actually very anti-mobile up until that point, and they finally got me by making a mobile game of one of my favorite game series of all-time. I spent a hefty amount of money in the game as well and was having a very good time with it and got myself heavily involved in the community and everything. Then they shut down the game after only a year of service, and the way they went about it was extremely scummy to boot (released a last banner with some very wanted characters on it, went radio silent for a few months after that, and then announced the shutdown after the refund periods were passed for people who spent money on that final banner). This experience with Square Enix and their mobile games was enough to make me never spend money on another SE mobile game again.

Wow, yeah I wouldn't touch a game by them again after that either, at least not one that asks for money to have any chance of having a decent time with it. I've only played one free-to-play mobile game that shut down on me, but luckily I never felt the need to spend money in the game because it was rather generous with character drops via free currency, but I also suspect that led to it being closed down at the end of last year too. I rarely saw other players that had obviously spent money on the game and most were clearly free players like myself who were happy with the drop rate of free stuff.


On the subject of poison areas in FromSoft games, is there anything other than antidote for Bloodborne and if not, what suggestions do you have for dealing with poisonous areas in that game? I picked it up again the other day and eventually just went around as much poison as I could and ignored anything in it because I just couldn't figure out how not to just instantly run out of antidote or healing potions.

You better believe I do. I just greatly enjoy the fun of getting trophies/achievements and seeing that nice "100%" at the end of it all.

I've never actually got all the achievements in a Steam game but they don't have anything like a Platinum-style achievement right? If not, would you like Steam to add one for getting all other achievements in a game?

Antidotes are the only cure for poison in Bloodborne. You either just have to use Blood Vials to heal when your health gets low or have a healthy stock of antidotes. You could check armor to see if you have a set that has higher poison resistance than the others, and that will make the build up of poison take a little longer.

Steam games so have an achievement that is only unlocked upon getting all other achievements, but it doesn't have any kind of special border on it or anything. 

So guess who's coming to town?!

Going to GDQ this year, and because I'm not insane enough to stay in the main hall and watch every single run 24/7, what're some cool spots around Minneapolis/St. Paul to do? I know there's the Mall of America, but I figured you being from around there would help point us into some fun directions

Obviously too late on this, but also unhelpfully answered this question on Discord. 

Since I've seen you playing it on PS the last few days, what are your thoughts on the Chrono Cross remaster @Dragon Lord?

Chrono Cross remaster was okay. Very lazy port by Square Enix once again which caused a lot of problems. Specifically the fact that the remaster ran worse than the PS1 version of the game. Pretty bad when playing a game on a PS1 gives better performance than on PS4/Steam/etc.. Hopefully some day they get around to patching it and fixing the issues, because there is zero excuse why this game isn't running at a stable 60FPS on all platforms, and instead is dipping below 20 constantly. 

So as to not derail the Ghost of Tsushima thread, I'll ask this here in response to your post there:

So in a long and drawn out way of trying to decide what game I wanted to play next after finishing the platinum for Chrono Cross, and random chance has dictated that this game will be my next game, so I guess I'm playing it much earlier than I anticipated after all.

What were the other choices?

I was considering like 30 different games. Eventually worked my way down to Ghost of Tsushima. Though that was like over a month ago and I still haven't even started it. 

Night Lord have you been watching any of this season or last season animes? If so what have been your stand out animes that you really enjoyed?

I really been enjoying Spy X Family and Love After World Domination.

I haven't watched any anime in the last like five years.

[Moonface]

I haven't watched any anime in the last like five years.

What happened to the plan of using your second monitor for catching up on all your anime?

[Moonface]

Did you ever check out the demo for Harvestella DL?

[Dragon Lord]

I haven't watched any anime in the last like five years.

What happened to the plan of using your second monitor for catching up on all your anime?

More gaming happened. I tend to use my second monitor to play Arknights/Azur Lane on emulator instead, or watch a stream. Or both. The solution to this problem is obvious: I must get a third monitor to use as my anime watching monitor.

Did you ever check out the demo for Harvestella DL?

I did not. I probably won't get around to playing it (I'm bad at remembering to check out demos), but I plan to get the game regardless, so it won't really matter much.

[Moonface]

I haven't watched any anime in the last like five years.

What happened to the plan of using your second monitor for catching up on all your anime?

More gaming happened. I tend to use my second monitor to play Arknights/Azur Lane on emulator instead, or watch a stream. Or both. The solution to this problem is obvious: I must get a third monitor to use as my anime watching monitor.

I get the feeling if/when you get a third monitor you'll end up using it to not have to pick between a game or a stream on your second monitor instead of watching anime on it.

[Mr EliteL]

Happy Birthday, DL! Hope you're not working either night but you might be just last night, but even if so it doesn't really matter when you can just think of the money coming in for it. Haha, enjoy gaming as usual though.

[Moonface]

Happy Birthday! I hope you have a good one in whatever way you choose to spend it!

[ShiraNoMai]

Congrats on making it another year on this hellscape!

Hope you got some good gaming in today at the very least