“You’re worse than Hitler, because even Hitler cared about Germany or something” - Morty

Besides what others mentioned (Valve being kept in check, barely, and offering more service as a platform), I think Sony can’t afford to do what Valve does, because on equal footing they lose.

Sony saves you a bit of money on the hardware purchase, a small benefit if you buy a lot of games. Maybe some exclusives.

Steam lets you mod the game, play it on whatever device you want (PC now, PC you get in 10 years, Deck, Windows, Linux, likely even some Android devices in the future), and twink the settings to whatever you want, for whatever resolution, quality, or framerate you want. (Edit: also, your device doesn’t become a useless box if Valve becomes evil)

Physicals and exclusives are just about the only thing consoles have going for them, and Sony just lost one. (Oh, and they lost couch gaming too, because SteamOS is opening up)

This is great, but a new dilemma for me. I’ve been waiting for Steam Machine because I really want the small size and easy moving between TV and desk, compared to normal PCs. (Performance could go either way, I’m plenty satisfied with HD but also do have a 4k TV to use)

But I’m not actually sure precisely HOW small I want my gaming box to be. It seems like this’d be just a bit too clunky for me compared to the cube, but if Valve time pushes SM into 2027 I might just cave in, it still seems more convenient than most desktops I saw.

Has a wife and kid, still lonely (idk I haven’t played MGS yet)

If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be looking for a cure, now would they?

I never used Win11 but I started using Linux (Nobara OS, by friend’s advice) in November, and not really. If you never used either, I’m sure the learning process is as easy, but switching isn’t.

I wanted onedrive on desktop to conveniently edit .tex files, which I can’t do on browser. The most popular option worked at first (after figuring out the terminal), but has bugs with downloading every once in a while (And Nobara doesn’t update it as consistently). The second didn’t work at all. The third, I got to connect, but I couldn’t get it to make a synced folder, on top of misleading description (the flatpack I found said it manages cloud, but it was the GUI for a package you needed to install via terminal anyway. And Nobara encourages to only use flatpacks, rightfully it seems) So I’m sticking with the buggy one and downloading the files from browser occasionally.

For that matter, installing TeXStudio had a font related bug too, and the solution was between the lines of a post about a slightly different problem and final solution.

The first installation (where I picked Fedora instead of Nobara at first) led to the laptop not booting, where my friend said “yeah that happens, I backup before I install something” (though he uses Arch), and I also accidentally installed Steam twice because the discover flatpack is a seperate one from the Nobara preinstall.

Windows? Most things are an .exe you launch, or have instructions specifically for Windows (complete with typical directories) while Linux has to account for at least a dozen distros.

Palutena from Kid Icarus Uprising, especially because the internet loves her and Pit’s antics, when I remember most of it was mocking him and gaslighting. I dunno, I like a lot of other bickering duos in games, but she just reminded me too much of grating people in my life. Pit is fine with it, but I somehow doubt asking her to be nicer would help if I was in his position.

In a similiar vein, in Coffin of Andy and Leyley (after overwhelmingly positive reviews baited me into thinking it’s deeper than edgy jokes) I wanted Leyley to just die after an hour or few, but the difference is, she’s flat out evil, and comically so. Palutena is just the realistic, toxic family member, with the excuse being that gods are assholes I guess.

(I didn’t mind Pit and Viridi bickering though, probably because she was an antagonist and Pit/the game doesn’t praise her as much)

I loved Strange Journey increasing recruit odds for demons of same alignment. Not only does that give it gameplay purpose, it means you can get consistent fusion fodder without the BS, while preventing you from peacing out of every fight.

Breaking news: Chill games relax you

Have you tried gyro?

Joystick only is bad, and a lot of console shooters relied on auto aim. Stick + Gyro is almost as good as Mouse, I had a blast playing Borderlands 4 on Steam Deck, even going for headshots is consistent.

I only need M+K for TF2 or Terraria, since I actually want really precise control there, but Solarknight has a whole video praising gyro and giving tips for TF2.

That’s also because M&L requires more attention to get the timing right. You need to look for cues who the attack will go to, see if you can jump on the attack or only over it, hold the dodge button rather than press, or multitask when both bros are being attacked. Or sometimes, DON’T jump, because you then take damage. The games are puzzle/action games with JRPG elements slapped in.

E33 is extremely telegraphed (barring the very rare jukes) so it needs to compensate with tight timing and erratic animations, requiring both higher skill + trial and error. Sometimes have to press another button, but you don’t even need to figure it out (I tried to jump some attacks because of Elden Ring habits lol), the enemy or whole screen telegraphs it. It’s a JRPG with action slapped in, at its core at least.

For another example, Deltarune and Undertale are basically action games too, but do a lot of stuff with their dodging, sometimes even switching genres to platformer/shooter etc.

Some of the newer FE games suck at that too, Three Houses in particular apparently.

Older games give you very good prepromotes in the midgame, and the 3DS games have the child recruits (it makes sense I swear) scale up to current story progress and scale off stats/skills of parents.

I was actually optimistic, because I like Mario&Luigi, so these combat systems CAN work. The problem is, the parry systems in E33 are 80% of your success (if you don’t grind), yet are more shallow by comparison, and most of the depth is in the RPG parts that are just a supplement (unless you grind + play on easier difficulty settings, but it seems you need a Picto for AP on damage to let you have fun then)

1. This goes for every JRPG: if clicking and winning is bad, how is chess popular? It’d just mean the RPG part isn’t balanced (or is not your type of game)
2. Mario&Luigi, the only series close to this I’ve played, just does it way better, some dodges require holding, almost all include figuring out who to dodge with, different effects depending on when you jump etc. Parries in E33 come down to timing one button, and occasionally pressing the others with very clear telegraphs. And dodging seems barely more helpful

I’m a big Etrian Odyssey fan, but the first one’s pretty basic, and I haven’t played the remaster.

It already had a pretty good gameplay loop going though, so it’s worth a try, especially if you’re going in blind to the plot reveals.

It really proves that the game can be a normal JRPG, albeit a grindy one in the beginning.

It’s unrelated to difficulty, but, is it a good one though? Being grindy to me is generally a pretty terrible thing in a JRPG. Part of marketing for SMTV’s rerelease was nerfing the impact of level on damage, and basically everyone loved that.

I also don’t see many defensive options for the half of the game I’m at besides Maelle’s redirect, or maybe absurd defense/HP stacking, if defense even works.

And some people STILL can’t beat it without parries.

Granted, I’m in Act 2 (Expert), and I think the ludicrous level factor into damage is to blame. The fact every other (mini)boss you fight is overlevelled, and just a few levels seem to be a 2-3x damage difference, is so stupid, I imagine someone running into 3 in a row and just giving up.

If the main difficulty is intentional, then it’s not an artifical barrier, the easy mode is an artificial easener. How easy is easy enough? Some people can’t beat Clair Obscur on the story mode (presumably by not doing side content) In case of gardening, it’d be getting someone to garden for you, and just chilling with the results.

Let’s plays/walkthroughs exists, and only lock you out of interactivity. And interactivity doesn’t mean much if every option beats the game.

Case in point, if I see some post-game superboss with lore behind it, I just look up the thing online.

Doing Fire Emblem soft Ironmans (not reloading when a unit permadies) made me love the series even more, it went from “ughhhh do I really have to move on without this guy? This sucks, what if I’m underpowered later” to “I lost 40 people and died for the first time at the penultimate map, this is a beautiful, sorrowful story”.

I now let a unit or two die even when playing for the first time, because it basically adds your own personal death scenes to the story. I will always pay respects to wolf boy who died to make that one final push happen, or respect the axe bro who went through his Kratos arc with a dead wife, kid and second dead wife.

A lot of hobbies like gardening, sports, chess require effort, why is it necessary for video games to be easy?

Forcing some challenge gets you to engage with more things rather than taking the easy way out. It’s like bungee jumping (I’d assume), sometimes a push is necessary to experience something new.

Some of my favourite moments were trying Fire Emblem Ironmans, which initially made me go “this is stupid, I’ll regret this, I should reload”, only to change to “this is peak”