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FractalSandwich
Apr 25, 2010

Dehry posted:

In 2018 the game Omega Labryinth Z was refused classification in the UK. It's a mystery dungeon game where the girls power up by growing their boobs. One of the characters was a first year high schooler that "looked young for her age" and carried around a teddy bear.
https://www.cinemablend.com/games/2389002/the-uk-just-banned-a-game-for-the-first-time-in-a-decade
The VSC should challenge the OFLC to a fight. It would be like the Ashes of video game censorship.

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Endorph
Jul 22, 2009
the sony censorship changes mostly seem like garbo because they seem pretty arbitrary in a lot of cases and they were sprung on developers with games midway through development with literally no warning. im not crying for love lost or anything but it provably screwed over random employees who were just trying to get a paycheck, its not like it really changed anything. most of the fanservice games are moving over to switch.

FractalSandwich
Apr 25, 2010
I don't really get why Sony think it's their problem in the first place. The mainstream moral crusade against video games is well and truly over at this point. What do they care about some random D-list third-party publisher's optics?

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Pretty much some dude had to call his wife and let her know he was gonna be sleeping at the office a couple days so he could put some bright lights over some butts so they still made cert.

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

Sony is still okay with full blown sex scenes. It's just anime games that get censored, even when the the scene being censored features entirely adults, such as Trish and Lady in Devil May Cry 5.

I don't care either way and think fanservice of underage characters is gross, but it does seem completely arbitrary and biased against Japanese made games as to what is allowed and what isn't.

Ulio
Feb 17, 2011


Zushio posted:



Brock is right.

gently caress this makes me want to have sushi and rice balls, there is a bomb rear end place near my house but they don't delivery how is that possible in 2020 to not delivery and still be in business....Maybe I'll just drive my lazy rear end there.

I mean people can say some niche Japanese devs have a problem with how they portray minors in appropriate situations but those are pretty niche games even in Japan. Senran Kagura isn't topping the lists in sales like Monster Hunter or Pokemon games. Meanwhile in the West we have Last of Us 2, Mortal Kombat X which are extremely realistic in their depiction of gore and those games are some of the best selling Western games of this generation.
Anyway I always thought it came down to if it's not harming anyone in real life I don't care about it. If they find a correlation between anime school girls increasing pedophilia or violent videogames creating mass murders then ya we should do something about it.

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

Ulio posted:

gently caress this makes me want to have sushi and rice balls, there is a bomb rear end place near my house but they don't delivery how is that possible in 2020 to not delivery and still be in business....Maybe I'll just drive my lazy rear end there.

They probably don't deliver because you can use some terrible service like Uber Eats or w/e to get it delivered by a 3rd party. Or order it for pickup like I do with the ramen place near my place.

FractalSandwich
Apr 25, 2010

Ulio posted:

I mean people can say some niche Japanese devs have a problem with how they portray minors in appropriate situations but those are pretty niche games even in Japan. Senran Kagura isn't topping the lists in sales like Monster Hunter or Pokemon games. Meanwhile in the West we have Last of Us 2, Mortal Kombat X which are extremely realistic in their depiction of gore and those games are some of the best selling Western games of this generation.
Anyway I always thought it came down to if it's not harming anyone in real life I don't care about it. If they find a correlation between anime school girls increasing pedophilia or violent videogames creating mass murders then ya we should do something about it.
In the most unethical psychological experiment ever devised, my crack team of experts spent ten years trying to create paedophiles through the strategic application of softcore anime porn. Here's what we learned.

The Colonel
Jun 8, 2013


I commute by bike!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0dLtbZhhDU

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009
A lot of those fanservice games sell better in the west than japan tbh. Thats why there was such a goldrush of localizing them during the vita era

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Endorph posted:

A lot of those fanservice games sell better in the west than japan tbh. Thats why there was such a goldrush of localizing them during the vita era

Yeah I have spoken to people Who worked on translations and basically in almost every case the West is the main market.

lunar detritus
May 6, 2009



For some reason that really reminds me of Mario RPG.

Ulio
Feb 17, 2011


Evil Fluffy posted:

They probably don't deliver because you can use some terrible service like Uber Eats or w/e to get it delivered by a 3rd party. Or order it for pickup like I do with the ramen place near my place.

Ya pick up is good but I am now getting use to just getting everything delivered to my doorstep more than before due to corona. Cons of living in a suburb is not everything has delivery or drivethrough.

Million Ghosts
Aug 11, 2011

spooooooky

FractalSandwich posted:

I don't really get why Sony think it's their problem in the first place. The mainstream moral crusade against video games is well and truly over at this point. What do they care about some random D-list third-party publisher's optics?

because accidentally getting nailed as a publisher of what constitutes child porn in certain countries is a bad time.

the worst is when the fanservice games are attached to legit interesting RPGs. like, the tits don't bother me but i don't exactly want my roommates to see me playing them in the living room

cheetah7071
Oct 20, 2010

honk honk
College Slice

ImpAtom posted:

Yeah I have spoken to people Who worked on translations and basically in almost every case the West is the main market.

The neps were coming from inside the house

DrManiac
Feb 29, 2012

It's total grognard poo poo but I'm really psyched for knights of the chalice 2 in a few days. The first game is a lot like Metal Max 3 where I can list off faults all day but I still really enjoyed the game as a whole.

Ulio
Feb 17, 2011


Been listening to "Relaxing Octopath Traveller" music on youtube. drat this game has a wonderful soundtrack, it might be even better than it's art direction. I wanted to buy it on the steam sale but dear Square has kept it still full price.

Million Ghosts
Aug 11, 2011

spooooooky
i wish Octopath was a better game because you're right, the soundtrack is great and the art is gorgeous. gameplay itself got extremely repetitive extremely quickly, and the writing was.... weak, let's say. i absolutely wouldn't pay full price for it, but it is worth trying on a bargain.

KariOhki
Apr 22, 2008

Million Ghosts posted:

the worst is when the fanservice games are attached to legit interesting RPGs. like, the tits don't bother me but i don't exactly want my roommates to see me playing them in the living room

Ah yes, Dungeon Travelers 2. At least that was Vita so you could hide the screen.

abraham linksys
Sep 6, 2010

:darksouls:
I've been having fun playing Trails in the Sky, other than some annoyances with the story that I mentioned earlier, but I'm starting to get some anxiety about the length of the series. I'm currently about 29 hours in and a small ways into Chapter 3.

I've started using the LP Archive playthrough of the game as a walkthrough, since the game has a lot of missable content, and the more I play the more I realize I could... uh... probably just read the LP for the next couple games. Like, I find the combat pretty compelling for what it is (especially enjoy how much they mix up who's in your party at any time!), but I'm not sure I need two more games of it, especially before moving on to... three more games of it?

I'm thinking about finishing this game up, then reading LPs of SC and 3rd, and then starting on Cold Steel. I'm curious, though: are there any significant gameplay changes or improvements in SC or 3rd that I'd be missing out on? I thought about looking at reviews, but I'm wary of plot spoilers, so figured I'd just ask here instead.

abraham linksys fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Jun 29, 2020

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

SC and 3rd add some new arts & crafts, and rebalance a few things, but combat is still essentially the same.

Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Jun 29, 2020

Tales of Woe
Dec 18, 2004

all the Sky games have more or less the same gameplay, the additions in SC and 3rd are minor stuff like partner/team attacks

Cold Steel has most of the same systems but is tuned such that you can use Crafts more often and they're more powerful, which makes everything a lot snappier and more fun imo. you don't have to use basic attacks nearly as much

Hackan Slash
May 31, 2007
Hit it until it's not a problem anymore
I was going to double dip on octopath because I have a hankering from the fiesta, but yeah it's crazy that it's not 30 bucks.

I like the plot setup, and don't mind that there's not any overlap within stories. It's a nice size to play one chapter/dungeon at a time, and I think the inn scenes do a lot to sell the camaraderie of the group.

Plus I could hear "My blade is unbending!" and get hype with Determination all day https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRtkK6TD_2LICkUVpXlYdGN7BzIPsUgpc

The battle voices hit that same place in my brain that Valkyrie Profile does.

Million Ghosts
Aug 11, 2011

spooooooky

KariOhki posted:

Ah yes, Dungeon Travelers 2. At least that was Vita so you could hide the screen.

legit the best dungeon crawler i can never ever tell anyone to play.

Cold Steel is basically Persona but not lovely. the difficulty curve can be pretty wild, but it's not a huge deal as it's very very generous with letting you redo battles.

Mokinokaro
Sep 11, 2001

At the end of everything, hold onto anything



Fun Shoe

Million Ghosts posted:

Cold Steel is basically Persona but not lovely. the difficulty curve can be pretty wild, but it's not a huge deal as it's very very generous with letting you redo battles.

I also recommend Tokyo Xanadu as Persona if the dungeons were an action rpg.

CubeTheory
Mar 26, 2010

Cube Reversal
Finished Xenoblade Definitive Epilogue, Future Connected, and it just kind of went nowhere. Very dissapointed.

Amppelix
Aug 6, 2010

Million Ghosts posted:

Cold Steel is basically Persona but not lovely. the difficulty curve can be pretty wild, but it's not a huge deal as it's very very generous with letting you redo battles.
i think you're missing a pretty big part of the appeal of both series if you're saying cold steel is "basically persona"

like they're pretty different actually despite superficial similarities

Barudak
May 7, 2007

CubeTheory posted:

Finished Xenoblade Definitive Epilogue, Future Connected, and it just kind of went nowhere. Very dissapointed.

The main plot meant nothing, explained nothing, and delivered nothing. The optional quiet moments with Tyrea were good, and should have been the whole story

Motto
Aug 3, 2013

With Dungeon Travelers it's more that they attached a surprisingly good RPG to their romance VN fanservice spinoff.

Million Ghosts
Aug 11, 2011

spooooooky

Amppelix posted:

i think you're missing a pretty big part of the appeal of both series if you're saying cold steel is "basically persona"

like they're pretty different actually despite superficial similarities

i could be more nuanced about it sure, but most people are gonna see the structure of both games being extremely similar and immediately make the comparison anyways. the combat gameplay is quite different yes, but it's a stretch to say the daily school social link/bonding level stuff is just "superficially" similar when it's practically the exact same thing.

persona 3/4/5 would absolutely be better with giant robots, so that's a point to Cold Steel

Ibram Gaunt
Jul 22, 2009

Million Ghosts posted:

i could be more nuanced about it sure, but most people are gonna see the structure of both games being extremely similar and immediately make the comparison anyways. the combat gameplay is quite different yes, but it's a stretch to say the daily school social link/bonding level stuff is just "superficially" similar when it's practically the exact same thing.

persona 3/4/5 would absolutely be better with giant robots, so that's a point to Cold Steel

I don't think their set up is similar at all outside superficial comparisons. In modern Persona you have like, an entire calender year to do whatever with some dungeon stuff on the side, where Cold Steel is set up like a traditional JRPG just sometimes you get a day where you can choose who you talk to. The Bond events aren't anything like S. links either mechanically.

The Colonel
Jun 8, 2013


I commute by bike!
the only mechanical similarity is the relationship system and that's just something persona further popularized, not invented

the daily life stuff as it functions is much lighter in cold steel and not really based around any kind of management other than whose scenes you view, you don't move through and plan each day like persona

Million Ghosts
Aug 11, 2011

spooooooky
i feel like this thread had this exact discussion not too long ago? i'm not super interested in rehashing it anyways. i feel like it'd be disingenuous to say Cold Steel wasn't at least somewhat influenced by Persona's popularity, even though they didn't invent the format the series was definitely many people's first exposure to it. i don't even mean it as a negative, most people i know who like Persona found Cold Steel quite easy to get in to due to that at least surface level of familiarity.

i know i definitely bounced off Trails in the Sky despite buying it on multiple platforms, while Cold Steel i basically binge played.

Zushio
May 8, 2008
Welcome to the internet. Reheated arguments from 5-10 pages ago are our specialty.

Ulio
Feb 17, 2011


Million Ghosts posted:

i wish Octopath was a better game because you're right, the soundtrack is great and the art is gorgeous. gameplay itself got extremely repetitive extremely quickly, and the writing was.... weak, let's say. i absolutely wouldn't pay full price for it, but it is worth trying on a bargain.

Ya that's basically what I've heard. "its good but wait for a discount." Its on top of my wishlist as of now. Gonna listen to the OST until then.

Phantasium
Dec 27, 2012

n/m

KingSlime
Mar 20, 2007
Wake up with the Kin-OH GOD WHAT IS THAT?!
I've never played a cold steel game but have played a ton of modern persona and its spin offs and spend too much time online

Fwiw I've never heard persona being compared to cold steel in any way capacity

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

KingSlime posted:

I've never played a cold steel game but have played a ton of modern persona and its spin offs and spend too much time online

Fwiw I've never heard persona being compared to cold steel in any way capacity

Same base gameplay loop; Socialize for affinity with friends of choice, classes, story dungeon and/or plot, repeat as calendar advances.

The Colonel
Jun 8, 2013


I commute by bike!
i mean. it's absolutely influenced on the surface presentational level and in the emphasis on character relationships but the gameplay loop really isn't comparable

Neddy Seagoon posted:

Same base gameplay loop; Socialize for affinity with friends of choice, classes, story dungeon and/or plot, repeat as calendar advances.

like this is only true insofar as classes and socialization as a surrounding framework, the actual way cold steel progresses is just a standard jrpg. the only daily management-y thing about it is bond points, you aren't dealing with anything else really

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Erg
Oct 31, 2010

I think it’s fair to say that modern persona had an effect on Cold Steel, but trying to boil down their gameplay loops to be the same or saying that CS basically has social links does a disservice. I think the biggest lines you can ferret out are the school settings and explicit friendship levels. I didn’t play the Sky trilogy but from what I’ve seen those seem like the biggest shifts to me.

I think the SL comparison misses just because while SLs are their own little self contained arcs for the most part, bonding scenes in CS are reactions to recent events. It’s a weird distinction but the fact that those bonding scenes are by design not going to refer back to earlier ones sets it apart. Devil Survivor seems like a closer thing if you want to point to an influence, since iirc it had optional scenes you could hit with party members for some bond thing during plot downtime?

And for gameplay loops it’s already been said but I find the calendar setup and general expanse of choice for what to do with your time the big modern Persona “thing”. It places a lot of emphasis on you being given the power to maintain whatever schedules going to get you through the game. CS has a calendar sure, but it’s just for set dressing. You’re seeing like 3 days out of the month, it’s using explicit chapters, and you’re railroaded around the nation. You never have to make scheduling trade offs like Persona, CS gives you infinite time to do quests before you hit the next marker. Persona is a constant series of weighing decisions on what you’re doing for the day, and I like it because of that.

In terms of gameplay loop I’d call earlier Ateliers closer due to that same challenge of being given a deadline for what to do and told get to it however you want.

I took forever to ramble about all of that so the convo might have moved on but it was fun to think about what a Persona game “is” to me vs CS.

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