misquared

I'm into what you're saying. Culturally, it's so frustrating to me that there is nothing worse for a man to be than woman-like. It feeds into this cultural feeling that feminine = bad, masculine = good.

But, I do have to say, it frustrates me on websites when only male shirt size options are available. Physically, the shoulders are always too big on me, and they don't fit around my hips so they scrunch up on my waist. So tbh we may still need gendered "sized" clothes, but I agree, and would love to see female/male cuts of clothes offered for all styles.

I'm conflicted on this game-- for context I'm a person who loves characters in stories. Always my favorite part, and I get attached to characters very easily. Plus, when given a plot-hole-ish story, my mind has an okay time filling in those holes without too much confusion.

So, with that in mind, I LOVE the characters of Detroit, and was so-so on the story. Whenever it pulled out and tried to address the overall plot were the weakest parts of the game, I thought. It got preachy, silly, and up it's own ass while painting a very sheltered/limited version of the world. As many others have said in more eloquent ways, this game is cringe-worthy when it tries to deal with the concept of slavery.

But in spite of all that? I would fucking push over mountains if it would make Conner happy, I love Kara so much, and Markus is a freaking sweetheart. I love them all, and grew super attached to the entire cast. In the character moments between the cast, my heartstrings were pulled so hard that I felt physical reactions in my stomach. When it stops trying to tell a big wide story, and spends time with the small scale stuff, this game really shines.

So, is it good? No. And if you've read a piece about the problems of this game vis a vis racism and were turned off? You're not missing out on much if you don't play this. But-- if you were like me and walked away from Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls caring deeply about the casts of those games? Then I think there may be some enjoyment for you to get out of this game.

What a fascinating essay, thank you for writing this! I agree with a lot of your points, while I think the title used love and care when handling Sayori and her story line in the first run, a lot of Yuri's story was uncomfortable and seemed to undermine what they were going for.

The one place where my opinion differed was your thoughts on the "True" ending (although I would maybe think of it as more of an Easter Egg), I was not as put off by it as you. But, I think this may come from the way I personally approach visual novels. As a girl who is more hetero-leaning, I play Visual Novels for the stories. My favorite novels have gangs of girls that I love, and I love spending time with them in their world. I have no romantic attraction to them, and sometimes more sex-heavy VNs make me uncomfortable! I see these girls as my friends, with interesting stories that I get joy out of exploring from a first-person perspective.

In that vein, while the story of DDLC was relatively simple, I still found myself caring about these girls. My heart broke reading the letter that Natsuki wrote when she was concerned about Yuri. I wanted to reach through the screen and give Sayori a hug when she talked about her struggle with depression. As I read Yuri's poems, I sympathized her struggle in understanding her sexuality. I cared about these girls, and at the end of the game, it made me sad to think that there was no world where they could just be together, and be friends (even if it's all fictional).

So, in that viewpoint, Sayori giving me a special message at the end was sweet. An acknowledgement reflecting how I felt about these girls. Sure, the in-game main character had selfish goals, but I played all the routes because I just wanted to spend a bit more time in the world where they were alive, friends, and had hope that they could help each other with the safe space that the literature club provided.

Granted, this is a highly personal interpretation, and I agree with your overall point-- the "good" ending does seem to be at odds with the overall message that the story was trying to tell. But, just wanted to throw in my two cents.

+1 to the guy that suggested Rivera. What a fun game.

Stella Glow was a tactical JRPG that came our relatively recently on 3DS that I quite enjoyed. It reminded me slightly of FFTA, but with more emphasis on dating anime ladies. The art style is.... a lot, but I found the story to be more endearing than it had any right to be. Has a fun relationship system where you can pursue friendships/romance with your teammates.

If you have any interesting in Harvest Moon games, I would recommend the Rune Factory series. RF3 is my favorite, but 4 is pretty good to and on 3DS. The characters/art design is very charming, less farming and more dungeon crawl elements instead.

Also, fuck yeah thank you for including Atelier series on your list. It's probably one of my favorites, although I have to admit it is far from a perfect series.

This song has been stuck in my head for like, a year now. So good.. making the change to the way they do battle music (general "Calm" theme for when you're zoomed out, "Blaze" version when you zoom in to character combat) is the best changes they've made the the franchise.

Also, bless the people on youtube that make excellent mixes of the battle themes that switch between the two versions.

From a pure number's perspective, the 'general' rate of friendship is +20 friendship points the first time you talk to them per day (+10 if you talk to them while they're busy doing an activity). There is also a Friendship Decay system, but it's pretty lax, only -2 per day that you do not talk to them. So, you would need to ignore someone for 10 days in a row to negate talking to them once.

As for what you get, what the others said below. Story scenes, they send you recipes and other presents, romance opportunities, and updated dialogue as you talk to them on a day to day basis. There's some fun character development in everyone's routes, so I would recommend going for it at some point, but it's optional.

Very well said, I agree with your general point. While I recognize the Oscars are cheesy and ridiculous, I love watching them as a retrospective. I love the montages, the clips of music from movies I enjoyed, the video reels of scenes from movies I haven't even seen that make me think "oh that looks good, I should watch that". I always wished there was something similar in the video game sphere.

But the VGAs this year felt like and apology for existing. Hastily reading out names of award winners they tripped over themselves to offer new announcements. The overall sentiment felt like "fuck this year, take a look at next year!" Which is... crazy! Considering this has been one of the most jam-packed years in the gaming industry in quite a while! With so much to celebrate, it was a shame to see hastily done montages (they couldn't even use music from the game in these mashups? Just generic dubstep-ish music?) and barely any time paid to the awards and game creators themselves.

There were some nice moments. The Orchestra was hit-or-miss for me, but I liked the fact that they made an effort. The Cuphead developers accepting the award for Visual Direction was so sweet, it made me tear up a bit. Unless you're a Hideo Kojima or some other visionary, the creators who make games are so undervalued. People treat publishers like giant video game printers, and forget all the people who put blood sweat and tears to make these things happen. I'd love for the awards to spend more time celebrating the year that was, rather than focusing exclusively on the year yet to come.

I truly don't know what to make of this game. I can get down with a JRPG, but the trailers for this game feel like a jumbled mess of fast cuts, characters yelling a lot, and silly design aesthetic. The Switch is my first proper Nintendo console in a while, so I was excited to finally dive into this series... but idk, waiting to see what review say.

Only Overwatch. I got sucked into that event loop of really wanting a legendary skin > splurging "because I deserve it" and get some loot boxes > Nearing the end of the event, still not enough to buy the skin with in-game money > buy more loot boxes or else I would have wasted my money with the first purchase.

Looking back, feels really stupid. Tried to take a chill pill vis a vis Overwatch since then.

1. Mass Effect Trilogy
2. Dragon Age Series
3. P3P & Persona 4 Golden & Persona 5
4. Fire Emblem Awakening
5. Life is Strange
6. The Walking Dead (Season 1)
7. Atelier Rorona Plus and the rest of the Atelier Games
8. Tales of Xillia
9. Skyrim & Fallout 3
10. Stardew Valley

Haha, I cheated by including all Mass Effect and Dragon Age games as one game each (I know, I'm that kind of Bioware trash, I love it all), but.. yeah. Off the top of my head, those are the games that stand out the most. Lots of good games to choose from through, I'm probably missing some that I really loved.