memo

Actually, nowadays it's very soloable: you can experience all of the story by yourself thanks to the Trust system. I only recently tried it, and control scheme wasn't as bad as I expected (but you do need some patience). From what I gather you don't really need to learn about macros and gear swapping mid fight in order to clear story content.

free trial players can be friend-requested and party-invited from non-trial players :)

I haven't played Dawntrail yet, but I have to admit that I felt something was troubling the game even in earlier expansions: as I finished both ShB and EW I couldn't help but be left with a state of "oh, tome grinding... again... in the same exact way as all the other expansions". No one seemed to care, however, so I thought it was my problem. And it's a big shame, because I expected differently from Dawntrail: from what I heard, it feels more like the character going on a vacation than anything, with really just the same gameplay loop.

Another thing I was expecting from Dawntrail, apart from big gameplay changes, is to redefine the story more significantly: FFXIV up to Endwalker was a great story, but sometimes I couldn't help it but feel like I didn't want to be so central to everything: it's great when MMOs make you feel like "a hero from the sidelines" because there's less immersion breaking (and FFXI did this succesfully, if I recall). I think writers really dug themselves in too deep of a hole:

From what I hear - reason I haven't played it yet - is that Dawntrail is fram from such expectations. I agree that once you try FFXIV's legacy controls you can't go back. Same thing goes for gamepad optimization.

To be fair:

• it got a remaster; a remake is usually something that recreates the game from scratch.
• DMC1 did not age that well in terms of gameplay, imo, as much as DMC3 did; it's a little stiffy! But it is true that it still plays much better than many PS2 games.

GTA games are the epitome of shallowness, for me. The story is always so vague and not interesting, you never get attached to characters. Gameplay is a boring loop, but its strength has always been being some sort of theme park. But it's 2024 and "hop onto a game just to go fast on car and shoot a couple of civilians"

Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Like Pokémon, nintendo developers know fans will buy new games regardless of how much new content there is to it. There is no legitimate reason for the game to be so close mechanically to its Gamecube entry, and I find it an insult to long time fans.

It makes sense, but I highly suggest to try and see visual novels as reading material with mixed media (e.g. music). Many are very mid, but some do excel: Higurashi and Umineko are a great example of that.

Do you have anything to suggest? Me and a friend would like to re-dive into minecraft as a cozy co-op experience but we both have some experience with it from 2010-2018 and the new stuff that came out the last few years just don't look that convincing.

I've seen modpacks mentioned, but there's so many I don't know where to start

I second this. A second hand 64gb deck is probably under 300€ if you are a bit patient and search local online used markets, while a new nvidia shield pro is around 220€.

Pretty much supports most controllers OOB, is literally a console that you can play less demanding games on, has a high resell value if you don't dig it!

Most PC games nowadays do not have physical releases.

It's absurdtpo me how basically no racing game company realizes that one of the key points to have your game be fun is to have some kind of progress. Contemporary racing games literally just throw cars at you in hope to make it fun by constantly giving you new toys.

I get that this is a thing that sells to the masses who /want/ those shiny new toys, but man. Imagine if a big studio actually took the time to improve on the vintage NFS progression formula :(

to be fair you can run on fresh kernel on linux mint through easy gui steps on the update manager!

Persona's combat system, if tweaked correctly can be a tremendous strength: there's a chance to have a great turn-based system in which elements play the role of the main "puzzle" to strategize over with both your demons and your party cast. I agree that Persona 5 had very little strategy in it, let's hope for future entries to be better.

I wonder what kind of battle system the new Atlus JRPG will have