Same. I had my eye on this because anything that remotely looks like the next Pharaoh or Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom always catches my eye. There was also so. much. micro. I'd rather be shuffling citizens or buildings around than manually selecting what plants to harvest. Plus I hate the name, lol.
I'll probably check it out again after 1.0.
LiS2 wasn't my favorite. It started to feel like misery porn after a while, not to mention bordering on the absurd with the variety of situations they put the kids through. I think the story would have been stronger without the cult chapter. Expanding on the themes in the last chapter might have been a better choice and more consistent with the overall narrative. I will say, though, the endings are solid in the "choices matter" department. Best in the series with that, and a standout in gaming in that category.
I liked Before the Storm and True Colors, so I'm definitely looking forward to Deck Nine continuing the series with Double Exposure.
It never occurred to me that a con would have this, so I appreciate you mentioning it. I'm gonna keep an eye out for it at my local cons. I've played a ton of riichi mahjong digitally but very, very little with real tiles.
What I've seen when looking back is a lot of the retro games aren't in English. It's not a big deal once you're familiar with the game, but I definitely don't recommend that approach for beginners. Not retro (yet), Yakuza 0 was the game that got me started with riichi mahjong. It has the added benefit of being a way to make a little money for other stuff in the game.
The current game I play is Mahjong Soul. Super friendly to beginners. It has a cosmetics-only gacha, and sexy anime girls is very much the trend in gacha these days.
Whoa, not every day you see Ys II in the wild!
Yes, there are going to be opinion pieces like this one filling the space for a major news story like this one, but there's still room for proper journalism right now. I recommend folks check out PC Gamer's interview with an IP attorney that worked in Tokyo (which was also the second link in this posted article).
Software patents are a thorny topic, and it's worthwhile for enthusiasts of the industry or those interested in IP law to read up on the concept in general. There's risk for Nintendo here, and I found Sigmon's offhand comment about how Nintendo's ramped up legal hiring to be particularly interesting.
The most likely reason is, in short, forced arbitration was a way to prevent consumers from collectively taking legal action, and attorneys ended up doing that anyway in a way that's even more costly to companies like Valve than class action lawsuits.
It's also caused some ugly press recently, and the US has already passed legislation prohibiting it in certain agreements. I'm not expecting it to be in terms of service agreements much longer.
Definitely one of the most somber games I've ever played. Agreed on the music; I'm generally not big on Motoi Sakuraba, but I think this is one of his best soundtracks. The overworld is a vibe, and the theme is a big part of why.
The undub is worth looking into unless one's really opposed to Japanese audio. Fifth-generation localized games were notorious for poor English voice direction and this game is no exception. Even the voice track quality isn't as good as the original.
30 plus minute show.
Kidding aside, I agree, probably nothing earthshaking coming ahead of TGS.
Sid Meier and Firaxis in general are probably the only ones that have been consistently great for me over the years. I still think about Alpha Centauri a lot, and I've played so much Civ over the years. His studio's XCOM games and Midnight Suns are all great, too.
Pretty much all the others I could name closed up shop or have declined in recent years.
Hrm, no mention of the super blurry character models that I had in the demo, so maybe they fixed that since and I missed it. Most of the footage looks pretty clean in this regard, too.
I had a pretty good experience with the demo with what DF would probably call low-to-midrange at this point (3060Ti, OC'd 10600k), and I'm the kinda person that's sensitive to frame drops/stutter. I still think I'll wait for a performance patch to be sure, though, if not a sale. Too many games for me to buy this season anyway.
It has to do with how the statute is written (I used to do comparative international IP policy research and analysis). Japanese works are given fairly wide latitude in creative sectors based on artistic intent. For example, you'll see knockoff brands all the time in anime or manga, but the intent is clearly world building (or parody), not appropriation for promotional use. That artistic intent standard is used in the courts. This is why all the side-by-side comparisons people here probably saw on Twitter when Palworld came out was more of an ethnocentric American approach. Plus, copyright infringement is frequently incidental and not the result of large investment (unlike patents), so, in a country that prefers to handle domestic disputes informally, these incidents are less likely to go to court.
As a country that more recently entered the world stage based on manufacturing, patent protection is simply going to be taken more seriously as part of the culture. And yes--while I don't have numbers--patent litigation does seem to get thrown out often when it comes to video games, at least the high-profile stuff, anyway. Here's an example between Koei Tecmo and Capcom since I was already on Variety.
They really leaned into the Chrono Trigger vibe with this one.
I like their marketing approach here by making a big splash at TGS. Sea of Stars also had a broader marketing approach. I'm not entirely sure how possible grassroots marketing is with this kind of thing anymore, at least in English-speaking communities. Chrono Trigger is a sacred cow in the JRPG community, and Sea of Stars got a surprising amount of backlash for not living up to those lofty expectations (yes, ridiculous ones considering CT was lightning in a bottle even among a dream team of developers and producers).