I think it can't be overstated how good VR is in NMS too. There's so much attention to immersion, even some things that bugged me at first like the mime controls for ground vehicles.
In terms of extra-musical appeal, Kumi Tanioka is my favourite composer. I've read her described as a "storyteller", and yeah, I feel the places, people and events radiating from her music. It's dreamlike. Sky's The Limit is the easiest of her solo albums to find, but I really like the track Gustaberg that she did for Final Fantasy XI too.
Not just the US, Australia has slavery* for disabled people and the long-term unemployed, as well as private prison slave labour. Guess which group keeps getting sent to prison for no reason too.
(*legally distinct from slavery, as determined by the courts)
Yeah, the game had severe balance issues too with classes not scaling properly and consequently being either completely dominant or totally useless based on what level you were.
Octopath Traveler. The UI was terrible, the loot was nothing but stat sticks, and most of the dungeons, of which there were too many, were just long tree walk with potions at the leaves. Genuinely the worst game I've ever played. The three-directional sprites were also extremely lazy. I think I lost my mind right at the start when the lazy script response saw one of the characters' childhood friend suddenly develop amnesia and treat him like a stranger because everyone needs generic dialogue.
The music and cast of thousands worldbuilding was fantastic, but otherwise, I hated almost every single of the 80 hours I put into it trying to give ti a fair shake.
Find an independent critic you respect and listen to the tenor of why they say a game is good. Or ignore critics and develop your own taste and sense of which studios, directors, artists, composers, or otherwise will compel you to buy a game.
Commercial media has always been collaborative with whatever power structures or industries it's associated with. Only good media is independent, and even then you get some really shitty journalists, and sometimes entire rotten publications.
And it has VR too! I think NMS and having actual Daggerfall doesn't leave me any room to particularly care about Starfield. I don't get the hype at all.
Would you tell me what games you have as a point of reference that the combat feels stiff and clunky? I think I generally play games with similar kinds of pacing so I haven't personally noticed anything. It's not as fast, fluid and flashy as say PSO2 New Genesis, but I wouldn't say it feels stiff or clunky to me.
Agreed the UI is awful though. There's a lot of missing functionality too... like there's just no way to manage echoes in their own screen.
Bit of international context why I'm ambivalent about this. The Australian Liberal party loves unions too, and our version of "unions" were developed in part due to US meddling in the Australian executive branch (starting from Bob Hawke, who was a Labor PM and previously a "union" leader). I think the big junctures where the system was set up for failure were the industrial accords which exchanged real wages for benefits... which are now being rolled back. And then at various points, labour action and collective bargaining were also legally restricted.
The rhetoric is eerily similar too. The Liberals also love gassing up small businesses and high-income workers, while actually being the party of discrimination and wealth transfer. Labor is too but at least they like the liberal political theatre of pretending to care about social progress, and hence make things worse much more slowly and mostly just for marginalized people like disabled, trans, and First Nations people.
Nice to see Australia actually innovating in social justice backslides rather than just copying the US and UK's homework I guess. Silver lining.
Cozy Soulslike is a great concept honestly. I loved the first Dark Souls because it mostly facilitated slow and tactical combat. Favourite build was a pyromancer with a high stability shield. Tweak the numbers to add more tolerance to errors (like the boss demonstration showed) and you do get a much more relaxed Soulslike.
On a serious note I love studies like this. You also see it in other interspecies relationships. Always interesting to see empathy in commensals and parabionts too (obviously doesn't include horses and humans). In another life I'd love to study ethology.
I'll buy any CyberConnect2 original IPs. Fuga 3 for the Switch 2, babeyyyyyy! I see they also have a couple of other games cooking with no release date.
Apparently the main thing that's been holding Monolith back from remastering X has been trouble updating the engine for Switch. More powerful hardware might enable it... let's hope.
With their dev cycle and work culture I don't think we're getting a launch Xenoblade though, or even anything.
I think it can't be overstated how good VR is in NMS too. There's so much attention to immersion, even some things that bugged me at first like the mime controls for ground vehicles.