ZeroRanger is in the Bundle for Ukraine.
First impression is:
Wow, this looks really good.
Wow, this feels really good.
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I finished Ever17 with a āsave your sisterā good ending which isnāt the true ending and implies you both actually drowned to death because your left arm is broken and your sister who canāt swim is latched onto you and thereās no way a kid can swim 13 meters to the ocean surface under those conditions and constant pressure crushing their lungs. So it really just came off as a watership down ending, and even if they made it to surface they probably shortly passed out from gas embolisms. Iām not gonna replay the game 4 times to get the ātrue endingā because Iām already aware all the characters are supposed to have made it out of the situation alive and happy so whatever.
This was suggested to me about a decade ago, when I was really into 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, which Iām not even sure holds up anymore. I was more impressionable as a teenager and easily manipulated by heavy-handed anime tropes freighted by garbled pseudoscience. Still, compared to the Zero Escape series, Iād probably have trashed Ever17.
The actual quality of writing was poor. And Iām not just talking about the translation quality which is also poor, but the script in the PSP patch is directly taken from the official Hirameki release in NA so it still deserves more criticism than if it had been fan translated. Much of the plot that wasnāt meandering filler was vague gesturing at important character backgrounds. At one point the amnesiac protagonist gets his memories back, and itās like, āMemories started flooding into my mind, like a dam had broken loose. My head pulsed as images of past memories flashed before my eyes, memorably.ā Wow dude thatās cool Iām so happy for you. The whole game is written like this. Each of these characters is enigmatic in ways that could be interesting, but when the game decides to crack them open it briskly skims over their character profile and continues to more important things, like what they had for lunch that day. Spoilers: itās chicken sandwiches.
There isnāt enough substance here. It might have hooked me with its concept had it played more on the inherent terror of being trapped in a flooding sea vessel. If I were in this position Iād be pissing and shitting. Weird how the characters are trapped for five days, and I get to read about them doing nothing for five days, with no mention of piss or shit anywhere, and on the fifth day the story resolves itself and everybodyās fine. Why write an interesting Escape The Danger premise if thereās no urgency, no tragedy, and no conflict to be resolved other than the premise itself?
This might be interesting to people who like slice of life dioramas complete with paper cutouts for characters. Thereās Shonen, the amnesiac protagonist with a dark past! Takeshi, the college guy whoās kind of dumb and horny! Tsumugi, the mean girl who eats a hotdog! Sara, the genius hacker who never gets to touch a computer for the whole game! Coco, the little girl! Sora, the holographic AI who tells you about science! All of these characters have backstories that unlock if you play the game several times, but good luck staying awake for that.
The music has like, one ambient banger tho
I picked this up because I held onto that recommendation for so long until I decided I wanted a visual novel that was fast to read and easily digestible. I got what I wanted I guess. I give Ever17 TWO CHICKEN SANDWICHES OUT OF FIVE!!! 
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What I want to read when I click this thread, Full Five Sandwiches Here.
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Special Cup in Super Mario Kart sure doesnāt fuck around! As novel as it is for a racing game to have lives it sure does make things more brutal. Also the fact that you canāt rely on items to be your clutch comeback mechanic. Not only because of their limited selection but also since the final stages are so full of tight turns and out of bound voids itās very hard to capitalise on the speed boost from the mushroom and star without a high risk of fucking yourself over further. The feather is such a cool item though that even if they did bring back would never have the impact it can have here just due to how enormous by comparison modern Mario Kart levels are.
Have also discovered that I may be suffering from āplayer two syndromeā despite growing up as the big brother and was very consistently player one. The most serious symptom of this is me SEVERAL times thinking Iām on the player two half of the screen for many seconds into a race causing me to completely fuck up my own race position for the remainder of it. Feels like it all could be used in some weird Freudian analysis of my current psyche state.
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This is my experience with every visual novel Iāve tried and I just assume itās the genre style that visual novel fans have come to expect. Just lots of filler and shallow gesturing towards character development for a lot of itās script. These games are always so long when they probably rarely need to be.
I think the only part of Ever17 I ever remember is when the one boy has a mental breakdown over eating hot dogs all the time, but now it feels like it must have been chicken sandwiches all this time.
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well, there were hotdogs in the chicken sandwich shack, and suddenly they all go missing, and one of the girls is eating a hot dog, so he freaks out and blames the hot dog disappearance on her.
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I can only scrape a qualifying position on Donut Plains thanks to the broken bridge that of course doesnāt affect the AIs speed in any way and the pesky Montys that always seem know when Iām even close to Top 3
Also fuck Luigi forever
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Tender: Creature Comforts update post:
- One date tried to eat me
- One date kissed me, but also unmatched because they want someone who takes more initiative
- One match looked into making an appointment to get matching tattoos (which we decided to do on a whim) and came back with a quote for $300-$400. Now I donāt know tattoo pricing that well but I was sticker shocked, so when I said I had second thoughts, they unmatched with me
- I gave in to the temptation and swiped right on my āexā and it was a generally okay conversation but I (real world Mikey) still felt actually tense lol
- Iām going to a dance party at a farm with a polycule thatās looking for a fourth because it āmakes couple activities simpler than with just 3ā.
I think my biggest beef with this game is that your dialogue options are basically Sleazeball or Awkward/Bashful and it feels kind of limiting. I am 3000x more charming than my in-game character, okay
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Can confirm
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zeroranger is very good and cool, definitely better than i was expecting! is it just pure coincidence that itās sb-coloured?
sky rogue is one iāve been meaning to play for a long long time, and i finally have. itās maybe the most blue sky non-sega game ever? nice breezy fun, all my deaths were from my own flying into things like an idiot, as opposed to being mercilessly shot down by enemies
i played delver years and years ago when it was in early access on steam, and it was a fun game with incredibly beautiful graphics. i played it today for the first time in a long time, and that judgement still applies, and it feels just a little bit more structurally robust too?
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I am finally playing The Last Guardian. This is the most gorgeous looking videogame I have ever seen.
4 hours in and I am loving Trico. Yeah, he can be unresponsive at times, like a pet should be, but itās nowhere near as bad as some people made it to be.
I normally donāt like puzzle games much, but I like Uedaās, and this is made special by Trico itself, the wonderful environments, and the overall love that springs from everything in the game. It lets you feel very differently from other games, where I would be like āokay, letās see what devs have thought in this room for the playerā . Here there is a lot more connection and you can immerse yourself in it.
Btw, playing it on the PS4 Pro. I know that there are performance hiccups on the regular ps4, unfortunately.
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Further Tender updates
- Naturally, Iāll be going on a no-expectations, catching up date with the āexā which is an incredibly true to life thing for me lol
- Also naturally, the character I liked the most has admitted that theyāre cheating (emotionally, anyway) on their long-term partner with me
- I aggressively unmatched a bunch of people, tired of them anyway
- I think one match was trying very hard at negging me but I just rolled with it
One thing I havenāt mentioned is that the game has some contrived reason why you can only go on 10 dates. Iāve been on 4 so far and have 3 more scheduled. Thus far I havenāt been on a second date with anyone which based on my friendsā descriptions of Tinder, sounds like how it actually goes.
Edit: Also you have to schedule/go on dates in more or less real time which is honestly not great for my ability to like, go about my day normally because I find myself watching the clock.
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Are there any other interesting titles in this bundle, apart from the usual suspects (Crosscode, Gonner, Wandersong, Baba, Superhot, the aforementioned Zeroranger, Towerfall, Bury me my love)? I have all those in one format or another (apart from Zeroranger itself)
i donāt know what it says about me that i love this type of thing? like, maybe not these specific ones, but i love Fate/stay night and that has reams of āfillerā (slice of life details), ridiculous dialogue, etc. itās part of the charm for me, in that you get a real sense of time passing and the mundanity of characterās lives - assuming of course the VN contains something besides mundanity, i.e. some actually tense and interesting plot developments
bad VNs are really badā¦ but good VNs leverage that sense of dull everyday and imperfect interiority to create a sense of verisimilitude, i think
Iām reminded of something that was once said about soccer, that the point of the sport is that the goals are made all the more miraculous by the pure slog of effort that precedes and succeeds them. itās like, the divine revelation in the midst of mundanity, type thing. i think a certain type of VN communicates this when you have, e.g., a fantasy setting of a war over the Holy Grail with reincarnated heroes of ages past, but your character spends half their time running around the city buying ingredients for mapo tofu while battling a headache.
idk maybe iām just justifying enjoying Nasuverse trash
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we watched a bit of Heavy Rain and itās miserableeeeee
was this game critically acclaimed during that period where every indie darling was about being a dad? that was a stupid period of games history
yeah in contrast to the cold open of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rainās whole opening sequence is just so so dreary and stupid. oh no my kiddos!! oh no my marriage!! this is not your beautiful house this is not your beautiful wife etc etc. we tapped out of the lets play just at the part where the origami killer is even mentioned
destroy the nuclear family, whocare
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If itās any consolation itās plot twists are also stupid.
There is a plot twist so stupid in fact, that the devs took it out of the game because leaving a plot hole made folks less angry that it suddenly introducing psychic powers at the 11th hour
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That youāre part of the majority. Iām a real outlier here, at least in the anime fan space. I havenāt liked any of the Nasu stuff, Fate/stay night included. Like most anime media, a lot of the plotting and character development follows age old tropes and I think when Iām made to read it for umpteen hours instead of passively watch it in 24 minute increments or skim it in 5-10 minute comic chapters, I just get bored of it. You know most of everything thatās going to be written before you read it. It doesnāt help that I never liked the writing (might be the fan-translatorsā fault for that).
Itās not unlike light novels in that way. Lots of people love that, but Iād rather just skim those in comic form. The writing quality just does not give me enough out of the experience without some additional stimuli like pictures and a quickening of the pace.
Now excuse me and my good taste as I go back to watching trading card game tie-in cartoons.
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In the first Untold History of Japanese games book thereās an interview of Ryukishi07 (Higurashi/Umineko) where he says some interesting things about the importance of the long mundane life part that precedes the horror (and accounts for half those VNs), both as a contrast to the horror and establishing whatās being lost but also because the true roots of the plot are hidden in there. I do think the localization style and quality might play a big role though.
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Agreeing to a second date with any character in Tender immediately pushes you through to an endgame, so I wound up having a bunch of plot threads get unceremoniously cut short. Which I guess is what itās like to commit to someone you meet through Tinder IRL? Lol.
Well, I guess thatās that. Iāll never know how things were going to go with the ex or with the person whose emotional sidepiece I had become 
(I wound up in the Polycule, they were the first people who wanted to see me again lol)
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I and others listed a bunch of interesting games new to this bundle in the discount topic:
Also a few games have been mentioned in each of the random game threads in KoP.
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