0082 infocynic

Episode Transcript
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(00:09):
Channel 3 is the future welcome crew to what are your 3A

(00:32):
Channel 3 podcast where we take a member of the Channel 3
community, discuss three games of their choosing, go through
some honorable mentions and someother odds and ends for a nice
little video game discussion. I'm Dan Tucker and back back
with me after after a week whereI I called in, I called in a
ringer. But back with me is Ray, and all
is Ray with the world. I am, I am back.

(00:53):
It's good to be back here. Hey everybody, tonight's guest.
I mean, it's, it's not surprising #1 the, the number
one JRPG fan on, on Channel 3. I mean, it's not, it's not
close. A master of in depth, detailed
game reviews. If you want to, if you want to
know what a game review is supposed to look like so that

(01:14):
someone can read it and understand whether or not they
should get a game, you should probably read some of these.
It is the one to know the info. Cynic info.
How are you doing tonight? I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me here guys. We are happy to have you just it
needed to happen. You need you need to be on this.

(01:34):
We had there'll be so many. You know, you give so many great
views and opinions and differentviews since, you know, we don't
have the largest JRPG kind of foundation on this site.
You're you are the rock of that area there and it's fun to do.
So we have to, we got to talk about these games here and
obviously #1. First game up, Rocket League.

(01:55):
Oh, I'm sorry. Followed closely by Mario Kart 8
to and. Fortnite and Fortnite, I'm glad.
I'm glad we already. We've already covered all three
that we're going to talk about tonight.
Game #1 Persona 5I mean, if it if it wasn't Persona 5, there
was going to be a lot of people might riot if this episode came

(02:16):
out. The first game was not Persona
5. A game you nearly left on the
cutting room floor, by the way. I need to understand that first
of all. Right, OK, so Persona 5 has been
covered on what are your three before?
And I was thinking about, you know, possibly getting in
Persona 3. Persona 3 Reload came out early

(02:40):
this year. I don't know, time is funny.
Not that long ago. Yeah, I not that long ago I did
a huge play through, 100 plus hours fresh in my mind and, you
know, wanted to kind of highlight in a lot of ways
Persona 3, the original, not Reload, was the inspiration for
Persona four and five that really kept the formula going

(03:03):
and then ironically took a lot of the things from Persona 5.
And when they did the remake of Persona 3, like we take all of
that. So it kind of came full circle.
But that said Persona five, it was my introduction to the
series and it just, it got its teeth in me.
Absolutely. It's also 5 gets you into it,

(03:26):
but before we get into five, youwent back and played the ones
that came before, right? Three and four are readily
available on what I'll call modern platforms without having
to jump through crazy emulation hoops or digging out, you know,
I don't even know. I think I think the first two
were for maybe PS2. Quote me on that.

(03:48):
Oh, it's recorded. Do quote me on.
That too late, too late. You know, and they're very,
they're different games. They're they're good from what I
understand, but I haven't playedthem.
So I played five first and then four and then three.
Just kind of went backwards. Or.
Like 4 even made me get out. You know, I I everyone who goes

(04:11):
to me on sale. 3 is like a big console.
I I barely play on on laptop at all.
But for the first time it was readily available on modern
systems was it's steam port a couple years ago.
Before that it was locked in like PS3 which is impossible to
emulate well and all that. So like all right for this For

(04:31):
this I will get out my laptop and play it on Steam.
Persona 2 June 24th, 1999 That'sPersona 2 way, way back in the
day. So I mean, the the crowd agrees
that Persona 5 is the is the best out of the series.
It's it's kind of the best selling one.

(04:52):
So what, you know, you, you played five, obviously you've
played it so much. What, what?
What is it about that that just has you playing it over and over
again? A lot of it comes to the story
and just some excellent character building and world
building. You're on this journey with, you

(05:13):
know, 8 to 10 of your closest friends and then like kind of
this supporting cast of another like 10 characters who aren't
part of your party, but they're kind of supporting characters.
Like there's the guy who rents out.
I don't know if you're wrong, ifyou're paying the guy who lets
you crash in the attic above hiscoffee shop.

(05:34):
There's the arms dealer who is selling Hoy guns to minors
because reasons. There's an investigative
journalist who is helping you just dig up facts and
investigate the shady characters.
None of those, you know, mostly these tend to be adults, not
always actually one sexy child. But these characters support

(05:58):
you, but not as part of your immediate party.
But you still get a lot of time with them and you get to really
kind of understand their story too, and where they're coming
from. And then you combine that with
just a kick ass soundtrack and an amazing battle system.
You know, shout outs to turn based JRPGSI understand you love

(06:20):
them Ray. I'm holding him at gunpoint like
I I sent him one today that likehe's, he's now at gunpoint to
have to play. It's funny, I just, I've just
never, I just never played them.It just so happened that I never
got the old. I think Paper Mario was probably
the first one I ever played. And then I replayed it last year

(06:40):
and was thinking to myself, oh, you know what I'd like this is
just like not my style of game. I still played through it.
I enjoyed it and I get it. But I was, I mean, I've even
played games where it's like a card based battle system.
Like I'll, I'll do like that kind of strategy stuff.
I'm trying to push the Kira Toriyama angle on him like I'm
trying to at least like push hisDragon Ball.
No, no, I guess. Yeah, No, the artwork is there.

(07:02):
I'm going to like, I'm just. Going to play on a screams
Hanime here, come on. No, no, it does.
It's and by the way, it's very good.
It's. Going to come out before the
sale ends, but it's like half off on Nintendo Switch right now
It's. Very very modern looking game
like the the graphics of are aregreat.
Yeah, there, there's AC three request at one point for like,

(07:24):
you know, that's like menu visuals or something.
And and you know, Persona 5 goesway too hard on its menus for
absolutely no reason that it needs to, but it does.
And that's anime. Commentary, yes.
Yeah, like it. It's visual style is.
It's just oozing the whole game.Nothing is cut.

(07:47):
Everything just flows in the same visual style.
And I appreciate that occasion. And you know, you said that
soundtrack, one of three games, three games on my soundtracks
list because I will not put justanything on that thing.
The other two are the Ori games,Yeah.
I mean amazing, what system are you playing this on?
Because you say you played on console, right?

(08:08):
It played it on ES-4 first, thenI played it on.
So first I played PS4, the base vanilla game, we call it 5
vanilla because then they came out with basically directors cut
the Royal edition and that I replay it on PS4 and then it I

(08:32):
played it on X1 and X Series X when it came to Game Pass
because they finally ported. This was a big thing where it
was Sony exclusive. And then Oh my goodness, they're
porting it to switch and Xbox and it's like, well, hey, it's
on game pass perfect excuse to play it again.

(08:55):
Plus you know the I would have to rely to play it on PS5
without. Like you can emulate in PS4
backwards compatibility but you don't get the extra like 60
frames a second. Can you explain what what's the
difference between the vanilla and then the royal that came
out? What?
What? What was added to it?
So Persona follows a school calendar basically.

(09:19):
And there's one of the other interesting things I love about
the game is just this, this strategy and this of planning
out. All right, I've got, you know, X
days before this deadline. How am I going to break those up
between spending time with my friends, boosting my stats, you
know, going grinding some dungeons?
What they did is they added basically what they call the
third semester. I guess that's just how the

(09:43):
Japanese school year works. You know, not an expert on it,
but you think I would have afterlike three of these games.
But so the first game basically the plot significantly ends up
basically the end of the calendar year in late December.
And in this game there's most ofJanuary and part of February.
So it's not like kind of a full like 3 extra months or anything,

(10:05):
but it is like an extra month and a half.
It's a whole extra dungeon and awhole extra, I don't know, 20-30
levels of this kind of procedurally generated function
that's also plays a significant role in the story.
They added two new characters, or kind of those one's a

(10:29):
teammate and one is one of thosesupporting characters I was
talking about earlier, those adults who are helping you out
and both play a significant rolein the story.
They added, you know, actual story elements to bring them in,
including kind of bringing them in throughout those first two
semesters, too. Not as much, but sprinkled in
here and there. And yeah, then they also added,

(10:55):
it's like, hey, you know, since we're making you rebuy the game,
we'll throw in all the DLC from the first game, which was is
mostly just cosmetics and you know, the typical RPG stuff
where it's like, yeah, here havea have a couple things to do,
healing or boost your levels or some one time items, that sort
of stuff. I, I never, I never imagined

(11:17):
that that cosmetics and stuff that, you know, really has no
effect on the game would be something so lucrative.
And not just that, the fact thatI would be involved in it.
Like I, I'm also a sucker where it's like, hey, you want to pay
5 bucks and it could like, your character will look different.
And I'm like, yeah, I, I want topay $5 and make my character

(11:38):
look different. It doesn't matter at all.
But yes, I do. I do want to do that.
How did you know? Yeah.
See, there's being a sucker for it, and then there's Ray shaming
other people who don't participate in it.
No, if you have the options available, you should respect
the developers that put in the time for the artwork and show
off the other artwork. That and.

(11:59):
Always respect the points spend on twitch to make Ray play in
bass skins. It's a lot of points.
To call, good call. Have you, what was I going to
say here? How do you, because you because
it's a time based game to a certain degree, right?
You have a certain amount of turns to to deal with
everything. How do you balance that with
learning about all these characters that are not in your

(12:21):
party but have, like you said, there's all these deep stories.
Do you have the time to sit there and then like interact
with everybody and learn all these stories?
Clark does, yes. So what I'll say is it's
possible to do it all in one play through if you are using a
guide or if you are just really good at figuring out these

(12:42):
strategies and these puzzles andkind of figuring out, OK, I can
meet with person A on Tuesday, Ican meet with person B on
Thursday. Wednesday, I'm going to go to,
you know, study and hit the bookso my school stats get better.
It's it's a very intricate puzzle.
It's a lot easier to do. There is a new game plus.

(13:05):
All good day RPGs have new game plus.
It is we thank you chronic trigger.
So in the new game plus, you don't keep any of like your
character developments with the team because it's basic, but you
do keep those things like those academic stats.
So you're book learning those things will carry over, freeing
up a lot of time for that secondplay.

(13:28):
I have done it blind a couple times and you know, generally on
the replays I'm using a guide. It's like, OK, I'm only playing
this through once. This time I'm not playing
through the 100 hour game twice back-to-back.
All right, so have you have you played any of the spin offs that

(13:48):
came from Persona 5? Because this, I mean, this game
is kind of, I guess three and four, you know, people enjoyed
it and like you said, it was thechange in style and five
exploded and there's there's four spin offs or three and one
more coming. Have have you played the the
rhythm game, the tactic game, orthe action RPG version of this

(14:09):
game? Which is amazing that they have
all this. I have played a tiny bit of the
rhythm game to see what this wasand said this is not my Forte.
This is cute. This is fun.
Not for me. I'll pass thanks.
I have 100% of the other two Persona 5 strikers.
Which is it? It's a moose.

(14:29):
So it's a dynasty warriors, warriors, whatever.
But again, they still they took that Persona five visual style.
They took that soundtrack, they took the the characters, added
one new character because you kind of got to have something.
It was good. It was good.
I enjoyed that one and then I felt like you got my mind's
worth out of that one. Persona 5 Tactica, thankfully

(14:52):
came to Game Pass, was fine. It's not a bad game.
I think I would have been disappointed had I paid 60 bucks
for it. But you know, Tactical RPG is
right up my wheelhouse. Absolutely.
And then you combine that with Persona 5, I was like, this is
this is going to be a must play for me.
And I knew it was going to be a must play and it's OK.

(15:16):
It's it, I think I'm being hard on it because it's like it's not
what I want, but I really what Ireally want to this point is
Persona 6, you know, it's like, I don't, I don't need more
Persona 5 spin offs. It's like they're doing better
than Todd Howard, at least. Like it's not like Skyrim gave
us Loot hero in the game or anything like that, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, I was.
I was going to go to George RR Martin, but you know that that

(15:37):
works too. And he's working.
On it, he's working on it. I'll say they they got one more
persona spin off comment, but I don't think yeah.
The. Mobile game releasing in China
and Taiwan and Korea? Yeah.
There's there's rumors, completely uncreditable rumors,

(16:01):
but that it's going to come out and I have to imagine like if
it's successful and it's a gotcha game, they're going to
just put that out wherever they want.
I would think. If it's a gotcha game, I don't
know how much I'll play because I don't know.
I don't. I don't love that.
Silly, silly laws may get in theway of some of the things I
think they're trying to do with that game.

(16:21):
Possibly. Yeah, I see what one of the I
see one of the categories and I think, oh, OK, I see.
So I'll, I'll finish with this because obviously, you know, I
don't, I had to look through thefuture games just to make sure I
don't ruin Dan again. Yeah, don't blow, Don't blow it
for me. Let's look at that.
There's been like 3 conversationtopics that either we're going

(16:41):
to blow the third game, the second game, or the honor moment
or the future game. So watch your step.
I'm doing my best. I will get.
Brian right back in here, I swear to God.
I don't see it on the list. I was going to say, So what?
What does Persona 6 look like toyou?
Persona 6 looks like everything we love about 5.

(17:02):
You know, the a new rush, but still awesome visual style, deep
character development, you know,and I just want Persona five
with a totally new cast. I'd love to see, I want to see a
little more tweaks and some quality of life like difficulty

(17:23):
is. It's not a hard game at all.
It's very actually difficult to this point for me to make
Persona hard. I'd love to see, you know, I was
a big just fan of accessibility in games and then are all like,
Hey, you want to play a Protono does have an easy mode, but I'd
like to see some it's like, OK, can we like maybe dial up the
XPA little bit just to make someother grinding, you know, to get

(17:46):
to 99 not quite as painful, likelike I'll go to Jay Bridges.
It's 99. I'd, I'd love to see, I'd always
love to see them experiment withsomething completely, like not
have it set at a high school, like still have to be on a
calendar, like have there be deadlines, you know, real adults

(18:08):
have deadlines and projects too.And you know, but at this point,
I, I think it's almost etched instone and they're like, you
know, this is the formula, like it's going to be high school.
I'd love to see a of a silent protagonist again, classic JRPG.

(18:29):
We got to have that self insert,that silent protagonist.
It works, but it doesn't have to.
You know, we we could have I'm fine with us having like give me
a character who has a distinct personality or help me shape
that personality. And you know, the other thing is
be it by not even giving the character a canonical name,

(18:51):
Persona five winds up doing all these gymnastics during the
voice acting. Like the they'll play the
pronoun games, like, oh, him. They're he's like, I'm right in
the room. You, you, you could say my name.
Or they'll just just literally just leave a just blank.
They'll just like kind of like step around it, like end the
sentence like where it should bethe character's name.

(19:13):
Just like we just kind of understand we're talking to you,
right? I'm just warning you now, in a
week you're going to get a note from me with a GIF attached
asking for permission to includethe Can we dial up the XPA bit
GIF approval. So.
You're like, Oh my God, I have to get, I have to extract that.
That's going to be perfect. Oh, all right, all right.

(19:34):
So now I, I get to go to the other end of the spectrum,
right. You're, you're here with Persona
5 with probably some of the the newest, biggest, flashiest
changes to the RPG genre. We're going back to Final
Fantasy now we're going back to the big one.
Was this the start of RPGs for you?
Like where? Where does this fall?
Yeah, this is. This is the beginning.

(19:55):
This is, this is, you know, I and I chose those two games
intentionally trying to kind of not completely bookends.
Obviously I'm playing another RPG right now, but the Final
Fantasy one was the start for me.
I had it on the original NES andI played this not out of that

(20:16):
game. You know, we had fewer games
back then for sure. And you talk about a game you
can just sink your teeth into. You know, the speed runs of the
game are down and like under, I want to say two hours maybe.
But I tell you, 8 year old me was not playing that in two

(20:36):
hours. 8 year old me was maybe playing that in like a couple of
weeks. And it's just, you know, so
there's a huge nostalgic factor,but I also think it's a great
game. It's brutally hard on the NES.
If you play in the original version it is extremely
punishing and unforgiving. You talk about modern quality of

(20:58):
life, things we take for grantedlike save points before bosses
not a thing. Items like Phoenix downs or any
other sort of revival. No, the only way you're picking
characters back up is through the use of white magic.
What happens if your white mage goes down?

(21:19):
RIP. You're going back to town.
Yeah. So you got to drag their corpse
back to the church and pay them and pay them to to revive them
for them. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's so I don't recommend playing on the
original NES or even emulated. Like, go play one of the many
modern versions, the DS Dawn of Souls, back in the days when

(21:44):
Nintendo had to put DS into the title of every single DS game.
Or the fabulous, fabulous PickleRemaster version is so faithful
to the original. Well, bringing in some of that
much needed quality of life, like a save anywhere function
and items that can restore your MP, items that can pick up

(22:08):
fallen party members. Not to mention there's a really
gorgeous coat of paint they put on it.
Yeah, they they putting that, that touch of just the graphic
improvement, you know, it's, it's not, they didn't really
stray too far from the 8 bit world, but it it works for the
upgraded 1080P screen for sure. Yeah, it it feels like a 16 bit

(22:30):
sort of look to it. So how did this find its way
into your hands to begin with though?
I mean, you're 8 years old. It's not like you're saying, oh,
let me go get this Japanese role-playing game and slap it in
the Nintendo like did it. Was it just something that
appeared in a box one day or wasit like a gift from somebody?
That's actually a fabulous question I don't know the answer

(22:52):
to. And now I'm curious and
intrigued to like, can I try to figure that out, go back to
like, where did this come from? I don't know.
And also the aid is an estimate.I should do the math, but I
don't want to never do math liveon stream.
But I think you and I are not far from the same age.
It's close enough. You're good.
It's close. It's close.

(23:12):
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, because. There were games that were just
like in a box like I know we hadfor Nintendo as a kid, like
facts and to do that was discussed on the Grumpy Trash
Player episode, which is like itwas in a box of games that was
just in our house. Put a gun to my head.
I could not tell you where they came from.
My dad was he's dead. So the information has died with
him as to where that game appeared from.

(23:33):
But I don't, so I do not know. Maybe some random garage sale,
something, you know, it's like, oh, this looks this looks
different. This looks interesting.
What's this? It's a provocative cover for the
like, if you look again, I joke about Mega Man, but you're
talking about like that you've got this globe and sword and
like, it's a provocative cover to catch your attention.
Simple. But like, OK, let me see what's

(23:55):
going on here. Pick it up and take a look.
You know, maybe even rented it from I wouldn't have even been
blocked, but showed block, but was a it was a local video store
that wasn't even part of a chainback then.
That was that was how much you could get away with and you
know, occasionally rent games from there.
Maybe that's how it started. Maybe I rented it and then it

(24:16):
was like, this is cool. I want this.
And then just kind of, you know,save my pennies or ask for it
for Christmas, something like that.
So how did you This is a game where I Yeah, I mentioned during
your recent discussion on it. Also, I've been playing the
Pixel remaster and I have gottenlost several times and just like

(24:37):
wandered off. I'm like, I don't know what I'm
supposed to do. So again, how did how did young
info cynic approach this game? Did you have a guide back then?
I'd be obvious again for people.Ray Ray.
We were not able to just punch up Google and we're not able to
just type in. You know I was live dot.
Com for this. I was alive, I can mute him.
I'm going to start just hating you out of this thing.

(24:59):
Just because just because I was -5 when this game came out
doesn't mean I I didn't know what a game guide is.
I played Banjo Kazooie with a game guide and wrote down the
facts. There there are, if there are
enough NPCS in the game that kind of tell you where to go.

(25:20):
I probably had read Nintendo Power, probably had a couple of
articles on it. I'm sure they.
They probably had ongoing feature.
I got. We got to call Brian up and find
out they probably had an ongoingfeature.
Yeah. Yeah, and it's just like, you
know, hey, you know, you can youcan save your game.

(25:41):
You can. You can go sail, get in your
boat, go sail in a direction andthat doesn't work out well.
You can always just recent and sail off in a different
direction until. You back until you back yourself
into a corner in some archipelago and have to have to
figure out how to navigate yourself back out of it.
But yes, yes, indeed. So do you remember anything

(26:01):
about like character selection at the time?
Because again, these are tropes now.
And and not to harken not not toharken to a quest you put out
yourself in the past week for the JRPG group, but like these
archetypes, the DND, you know, classes, again, not something
that 8 year old me at the time fully understood.
Like what is the like you said, what does the white mage mean

(26:23):
versus the black mage versus thered?
Like what does all that mean? So one, how did you approach
that first of all? And then I want to ask about
modern info. Cynics rerun at this.
I have played, you know, so I played it several times as a
kid. You know, I, I play with various
different party combinations. I don't know how I figured out

(26:45):
the first time what things did, but you know, trial and error I
may have actually had. And this is the thing that
again, we may have to explain toRay, but it's called an
instruction booklet. It was a piece of paper that
came together with the game. And I kind of told you some
things you might need to know about the game.
See that may have actually explained the character classes.

(27:07):
And that's assuming, that's assuming that the book made its
way to you because like you said, half of this stuff shows
up in a yard sale or a flea market.
And like there's you're lucky you get the, the, the black
plastic NES cover for the cartridge itself.
Kevin forbid the book finds its way to you half the time too.
I got, I got the pull out, pull out.
I've got like like an Xbox 360 box with a.
I'm just, I'm just hoping. It is, though I've got a couple.

(27:29):
This is this is a great bookend because between Ariel Apostle a
few weeks ago, being in his likemid 20s and and now I got
someone on my side, we're just dropping elbows on right let's.
Go killing me. That's the early start time.
I'm not ready for it either. So, so you know, you're, you're,
you're very vocal about what thecorrect build is now, though.

(27:51):
So tell me, tell me about the correct build for, you know,
we've talked about this game. People need to pick it up.
The, the pixel remaster's beautiful.
It's a great way. It's a great point to come in
here and come back and, and see where this all came from.
But what, what's the build? Somebody opens the game up, now
what do you tell them to play with?
If you're playing the original 8bit Nintendo NES version for

(28:12):
some unforeseen reason, your best is something like Black
Belt, White Mage, Fighter, BlackMage.
And that fighter is just to carry you through like the 1st
1520 levels of the game and thenhe's going to take a dirt map
the rest of the game. That Black belt is going to
carry you the rest of the game. He is literally One Punch Man in

(28:34):
the original version. Like the scaling is so busted.
It was never meant to be that good.
And there's like The thing is, it's completely flipped in pixel
remaster version. Black Belt's a waste of space.
He's not doing anything for you.I would do something there like
you can either do fighter ninja black white, or you can have fun
with like a fighter red, black white.

(28:56):
We call it like fighter rainbow.The fighter is going to be
totally fine. He's going to carry pretty hard.
You don't need to grind as much as you did in the original
version, which is where that blackout really starts to shine.
Like we're talking like Level 42plus for the black belt in the
original NES version, which is way, way higher than you need in

(29:18):
the modern versions. The modern versions, you're
going to stop somewhere in like the high 20s, low 30s, maybe the
speed runners are probably doingit in like the teens or 20s
because they're insane. But the fighter you just you
just find gear, you slap it on him.
He gets levels naturally along the way.
He's he's exactly what you expect.

(29:39):
Coral fighter. You know that the the heavy
armor, big swords, not the fastest guy on the planet, but
you know, in a term based game, speed doesn't matter that much.
It does. The game actually does have a
speed mechanic, which is like you can get multiple hits in a
round. That ninja can be a good DPS
machine with the right tools. But like the problem is the

(30:00):
ninja, it's kind of Dead Space for like the first half of the
game when he's just a thief. The thief is the is just.
He doesn't have anything going for him.
All right, so I I. Have one other question?
Not not to spoil you know your list is a huge time jump.
This is the furthest back that we're going in this

(30:20):
conversation, though the thread of RPG will be woven throughout.
But I I have to ask so that in between time, not that I need
you to list every game kind of in between, but like what
happens after Final Fantasy likeI I'm going to safely say a bug
has been bitten for you. It's not like you were dormant
for 25 years after that, then suddenly resurfaced in the in

(30:43):
the late teens with a a fresh batch of RPGs, right?
I guess one of them will be maybe not.
But like, you know, in between, like what happens, Nintendo
Power just telling you like, hey, you like Final Fantasy,
This is what we're going for nowor what what happens in between?
I get my hands on the original Dragon Warrior somewhere in
there. That's fun.

(31:04):
Dragon Quest is now known for, for the rest of us, but I, I
think D&D had the, had the had the title in lockdown.
So we couldn't, we couldn't get the Japanese translation.
Yeah. Yes, yes, I've been fixing those
search terms on some of those Dragon Warrior entries and yeah.
They were, they were early ones.Sorry.
I had I had two titles on the mall because it was a mess.

(31:26):
I did not have a Super Nintendo.We will avoid any controversies
around how it is pronounced. I did not have one as a child,
but I did eventually like through the magic of emulation.
Go back and definitely fill in those holes.
Chrono, absolutely. Chrono Trigger, you know,

(31:47):
definitely go to your Final Fantasy 4.
Still to me I do give it the image over Final Fantasy 6 known
as two and three and back in ourday I even played five with a
fan patch fan translation back before it was localized.
I had some other weird ones actually they just remade Legend

(32:10):
of Dragoon came out on a remake version recently.
I have not touched the remake. I'm not sure how it holds up.
Played some things you get into GameCube era.
Not the greatest system for RPG.This is like when it starts to
split into, like now you really need to be yeah, yeah, square.
Square vacated the Nintendo Front and they were out.

(32:33):
Yeah, yeah, we've got, we do have Thousand year door,
Thousand year door on Game Cube.That is amazing.
And I have not touched the remake yet.
It is on my short list, but thatwas definitely.
How long? How long is your short list?

(32:54):
You can't say you're not allowedto say shortlist.
You can say it's on your list, but I don't think you could say
shortlist. Yeah.
It's a relative. I actually do keep a very short
list because I don't plan out more than like one to two games
ahead. Like I know after I finished.
Currently playing Alexa pass 2. As soon as I finish this I am
diving into Prince of Persia Lost crown because right after

(33:17):
JRPG is my second love. Isn't a trade Venus?
Love it. I I mean, just very quick on
that there's there's certain things in that game that I think
that I met I'm going to measure future Metrovanias based on how
they kind of put this game together.
I. I.
Love it. I I I would have been done with

(33:38):
Octopath but I failed the Super ultra deluxe final optional post
game boss like three times in a row tonight right before
recording this. Well, let us let us jump back.
Let's jump back to the future now.
We're going to go to Fire Emblem3 Houses, the singular Nintendo
Switch entry for Fire Emblem. I'm sorry, hang on.

(34:01):
Apparently there was one called Engage last year.
I don't believe you, but I've been told that's the case.
But we're going to go with a theme of school calendars
because thank thank God Final Fantasy was in between.
Otherwise we'd have set an unfair expectation that every
game you picked have a school calendar tied to it.
But yeah, so we're just Fire Emblem.

(34:21):
So Fire Emblem, I, I think we finally just got it in, in the
Americas because of the fact that Square pulled out and went
over to PlayStation. So Nintendo's like, fine, you
know what? It, it get intelligence systems,
fine. You're you're, we're calling you
out of the bullpen and you get to do Fire Emblem in the US now.
Right. And so to dovetail back into
what the question you were asking me a minute ago, one of

(34:42):
the things in that GameCube era that I didn't want to spoil here
was Fire Emblem. So I played.
There are two Gamecubes. No, actually one is a Wii.
The the first one is Fire EmblemPath of Radiance and this was my
introduction to Fire Emblem in the GameCube era.
And the reason I didn't put thisin my 3 is because it is you are

(35:03):
not fighting this game short of like $400.00 and you need
original hardware. The three houses very accessible
game love it. One of the probably my favorite
starting point for Fire Emblem. It's it's very accessible.
You've got amazing story again. And I always I'm looking for

(35:24):
that story in RP GS. I let Final Fantasy 1 go with a
slide because it gets us, it gets a pass for nostalgia and
for that in the bar really for like, hey, we can do JRP GS here
in the West it. It it put it on the map?
Yeah. It gave us, it gave us a
template, yeah. Yeah, so Fire Emblem, you've got

(35:45):
you've you've got turn based strategy.
We talk, you know, again, we're going back to that turn based
strategy and we've got that tactical.
So we've got this grid, we've got our characters, we've got
the monsters. We can kind of see the whole
battlefield. Except in some of the titles
they actually do have fog of War, which I missed.
They haven't done that recently.Not as much with it.
A little bit here and there. I think in Three Houses.

(36:05):
I don't know if Engage had any, but we didn't talk about Engage.
It wasn't a great title. What are you talking about?
Yeah, exactly. You've got, you know, as the
title says, 3 houses. So there's, you know, these for
whatever reason. We've got just three noble
houses coming together at this, you know, Central Academy for

(36:28):
everyone to learn the arrow battle and war and spar off
against each other and fund scrimmages and, you know, have
friendly rivalries as one does when when there are such things
in play and you can align yourself, must align yourself to
one of the three houses at the start of the game.

(36:48):
And then you can slowly work basically poach the other
students from their houses and be like, hey, you want to come
to my team. And so that gets into this
aspect of like customization, team building and really having
a say in kind of how you can develop like, Hey, I'm, I don't

(37:11):
have anyone in my house. Like every house has, you know,
it has basics that'll get you byyou've, you've got a healer,
you've got a tank, you've got a mage.
You just might not have the bestof the breed in each.
So if you want the best of the breed, you're going to have to
go poaching. It's like, you know, of course I
want to get the best of the breed.
I want to min Max. It's a quite and true JRPG

(37:32):
requirement. You're going to min Max
everything and I'm going to go find, you know, the best
characters. And I have not actually played
through all three houses, so that's probably going to be
someone's question. I've played through, I want to
say two of the houses fully. I'm impressed.
I'm impressed by the time commitment you put into that.

(37:52):
Anyway, it was a question I had,but like, I've never gone.
I want to go back, but I like, no, I don't know.
I don't have time for that. No, Yeah.
Yeah, like I I'd love to go backand do the 3rd house, but like
if I'm just going to recruit allthe other students anyway, it's
not going to play out that much differently.
I can just go watch the cutscenes on YouTube.

(38:13):
Nothing, nothing wrong with thatthere.
So which? Who was your first support?
Was it? Was it Edelgard and the Black
Eagles? Dmitri and the the blue line.
It was Edelgard, which I see, you know, for anyone listening
to this, if you're and you're inspired to pick up Three
Houses, it was a terrible first choice.

(38:34):
There's a lot of marketing that kind of centered around
Edelgard. And so I think a lot of people
defaulted into Edelgard. There's weird things with her
story that don't make it a greatfirst play.
Don't pick one or the other two.You can't really go wrong with
either of them. But I did play Elgard first and
then I think I played Claude seconds the Nah, I'm second

(39:02):
guessing myself. What color?
What color were they is the question.
That's what I that's what I haveto remember.
Like who was the red one? That was Edelgard.
I'm sorry, it was Edelgard. That was Edelgard.
Yeah, you know what? I do think it was.
I do think it was the Blue Lions.
I played the second time. I'm in the camp of like, you're
all they were all terrible. So I just had to pick one of

(39:25):
them and I went with Edelgard's for for my choices.
Like are you seem like the leastterrible?
It's kind of like kind of like Fallout 4, which is like you're
all of you are terrible, but I have to pick one of you, I
suppose. So I'm going to pick you.
Let's do this. Yeah, it's legit.
So one of the big differences here besides being a tactical
RPG, so you're placing your units on the field as you
mentioned, you're deciding who'syou know what, what skills are

(39:48):
being developed. But one of the things that Fire
Emblem is set apart with from your final fantasies of the
world is perma death. And again, this is a good entry
point. So for anybody who is
intimidated by the thought of that, of listen, my, my Archer,
my Archer Jimmy over here or whatever their name is in the
game, I can't remember. But you know, I've got my little

(40:09):
Archer Jimmy. He's tiny over here, but he's
got his bow and he's fierce withhis bow.
And if he dies, he stays dead forever.
But as much as I get the old manon the lawn of like, no, they're
going to stay dead. There are two things in this
game that are good quality of life.
Abilities option one is you can just turn permit death off.

(40:29):
So for anybody who's intimidatedby that, like I, I don't know
what I'm going to do if I've only got 3 people left.
I'm in the final boss. I was supposed to have like 10
people in the fight. You can turn it off.
The second thing is there's a time rewind feature that is part
of your character's story. So again, don't be intimidated
by this because if you see suddenly you're starting to get
wrecked, like you just rewind three turns and, and unscrew it

(40:50):
up. And I'll, I'll admit, I use
that. That was a, that was a game
function as far as I'm concerned.
I used it liberally. So here, here we go.
But it's it is part of the plot as part of the narrative of the
game and I am all for it. Like I played the GameCube and
the Wii title after that with perma death and those games did

(41:14):
not have the choice. And nor does the original
Nintendo version, which is also for anybody who's interested in
going back and checking nostalgia, is available now.
You, you get to the end of a 2-3hour mission because these maps,
you know, the, the time it takes, you're carefully
advancing, making sure to kind of get that right balance of

(41:38):
I've got to play somewhat defensive, but I also need to
like get through this before, you know, I've actually, you
know, I need to make a hard savebecause this is the GameCube
arrow. You know, we, we don't just
have, oh, just just put it in sleep mode.
It's fine. And you get to the end and one
crit and well, shoot, that was a3% chance and you just Ko'd

(42:02):
someone that is absolutely vitalto my team.
That's a reset sneak. Attack from the West.
Everybody's dead. I will absolutely take a rewind
function built into the game andnot feel any shame about that.
I think I think that's a great quality of life.
I will still play permanent likeit is.
I will not turn that off like the the rewind there is.

(42:25):
That's your option that that's your safety net.
If you if you can't get through the mission with the rewinds,
you deserve to die. Your character that it was meant
to be, that is fate. That is not the story goes.
So we've we've done obviously the term based RPGs.
We've done kind of the tactical one and now we go to detective
RPG. First I will mention Disco

(42:48):
Elysium. So again, we we're kind of
covering, you know, obviously RPGs your thing, but we're
covering a lot of different versions.
This one not really, you know, not a combat game.
It's not like combat. It's just kind of story and
decisions. We keep write a story.
All right, so, so tell me what, what is it about this story that
that was big for you? I wanted to get this one out

(43:10):
because I feel like this one flew under the radar a little
bit. And this is an incredibly weird
game that is also good. And and Speaking of which,
that's a great quest idea right there.
Like what's what's a good weird game?
This game you're a lot of it takes place in like your inner

(43:33):
monologues and you're developingthese, these skills, not skill
tree, but it's just like like any just skill points.
You would just put them freely into like 20 different skills.
And as you level them up, it improves dice rolls.
And this game you literally likethey show you those dice rolls.

(43:54):
You know, a lot of games just kind of they're they're rolling
random numbers free behind the scenes, they're hiding it from
you. But this game literally tries
the dice on the screen and it's just two D6.
And so, you know, bumping up a point in a skill, it can be a
huge difference. And just the idea of this
detective who may be going slightly crazy, you know,

(44:16):
talking to himself, having thesearguments with himself.
And then also just there's a number of different ways you can
approach the game by based on how do you like you're still
trying to solve this overall, this mystery of what's going on,
but you might take a radically different path based on what

(44:36):
skills you've levelled up and what checks are going to be
possible for you to succeed because they honestly don't just
let you. You can't just like spam like,
oh, I'll just re roll, re roll, re roll.
Most of these checks in this game you can try once per in
game day. So you go back to we got that
calendar again, sneaking in there.
Wasn't expecting that, were you?And then?

(44:58):
It's all coming full circle. It's all coming full circle.
So one of the things you can do like I think if the skill, if
the check is a once per day check, you can reset it in a
couple of different ways. And one of those is by levelling
that skill up, like whatever skill is used for that check.
So that might be something whereyou just like, OK, I failed that

(45:20):
check. But I really think that that's
the key to like unlocking this next part of the puzzle.
I'm just going to like, you know, there's no time pressure,
like real time, like clock time,you can take as long as you
want. Walk around this.
It's a small little island. You can kind of go talk to
everyone, figure out what your next move is going to be and
then decide, OK, I want to try for this check.

(45:44):
OK, I failed that check. What's my backup strategy?
Where am I going next? Who am I talking to?
And you know, I'm not going to play if you kind of have that
literal like good cop, bad cop who kind of almost with
yourself. And how do you develop your
personality? So what was what was your your
style of going through how, what, what, what worked for you?

(46:07):
What kind of skill checks were you trying to go for?
How'd How'd you make your way through the game?
I developed kind of a smart and kind of just very, very
intuitive, kind of like read people really well.
I don't know if I I wasn't like silly channeling any particular
one, but the name it's coming out like Columbo just to go old

(46:29):
school again for a little while.But you know, he's just I didn't
I didn't want to be belligerent to people if I didn't have to.
I didn't want to be, you know, it's confrontational like you,
there's no combat in the game, but you can like there's skills
for like, you know, just like your physical strength and those
sorts of things are there. But I just wanted to kind of

(46:53):
develop along various intellectual lines.
And I wanted to play in this onea couple of times just to get,
there's a middle section of the game where there's like 3 pretty
different branching paths and kind of like see how though it's
play out. This is a short enough game
where it's, you know, it's not the 100 hours that a Fire Emblem

(47:15):
is going to take you. So this is a fun one to kind of
replay a couple of times and just like what happens if I go
this way instead. And so I don't when you post,
even recently one of the Metro games, you always post kind of
like your completion percentage,whatnot.
What, what kind of ending did you get in this one?
By playing it multiple times youend up finding the best ending.

(47:35):
Or did you get the best ending immediately?
I don't think you can get the best thing immediately.
Maybe you could, I'm not sure what that I definitely got all
the ending eventually. So that was kind of yeah.
In a game where it has multiple endings, I am likely to seek out

(47:57):
and get every ending. Unless it's the kind of thing
where it's like you going back to three Houses where it's like,
OK, how does ending play out slightly differently if I align
with one of the other houses? I'm not going to replay 100
hours for this, but if it's something like, you know, I can
just make a save like the last chapter and maybe play that out

(48:18):
differently for an endings. I love doing that.
Do you do you think that what the game considers the best
outcome, it was the most interesting outcome of the game,
or did you think it was a different one that was more
interesting? Yeah, trying to keep this
relatives for you because I think everyone should go try
this. It may not be, but like you
should at least try it. Like if you can get your hands

(48:39):
on a demo for this, like I feel like this is a good one to try
that you can get into this pretty fast.
It's on a bunch of game passes too.
I think it's on PlayStation Plusor at least it was at some
point. Or Game pass It's.
Also, I mean, we'll be we'll be late, but it's on Steam sale
right now too for a few bucks. God mother.
Yeah, I'm pretty. I'm pretty short.

(48:59):
I'm pretty. I'm pretty sure it is.
Of course, everything, yeah. Everything's on Steve's sale
right now. $0.45 get it for $0.45 Can't pass enough people.
Did you just send it to me? I did like, oh, never.
I did. No, that was another one.
Never mind. I, I did like what the what the

(49:20):
game did with the with, you know, their so-called best
ending. It it, it felt like the most
satisfying ending. The endings were all they were
all interesting. And I would say again, if you
get into this game and and you play through it like, you know,

(49:40):
make a save pretty late in the game and see if you can probably
branch out. You may not be able to branch
completely into like all the different endings.
They may require different skills or like different
decisions you've made back a couple days.
But it this is a crazy game. It's just it gets weird.
And if you're smart enough to pick it up for 4 bucks or it's
too late for you now and it willshow up another time.

(50:02):
Oh, and if you want, what if youwant the full version though?
The. That's the final cut.
The final cut. Oh, no.
Oh, what is this? Plus what?
There's plus something. Oh, plus control plus control.
Oh, plus. Control.
Are they binding of us? Never mind, you can buy Disco,
Lesium and Control if you want to also get control for 13 bucks

(50:25):
right now. That's the that we call EU
Exorcist pack. That's the that's that's right
there. Those aren't those aren't the
same studio that's. I don't know what I I can't.
I have no idea the. Connection I know between those
two games is U Exorcist. I mean, I've, I've played
Control, so it's a great game, but that that's the Alan Wake
universe. It has nothing to do.

(50:46):
There's there's nothing visually, there's nothing play
style wide, there is nothing similar between those two.
Games. Yeah, I don't.
You can. You can connect to Kevin Bacon
before you can connect those twogames together.
Develop We're probably never getting a sequel to Disco
Elysium because there was some really shady stuff going on with
like the bad blood between the development team and.

(51:09):
So controls for free if you wantto play cloud version on twitch.
Just if if if if if. Switch was your only option and
you're unaware how much better things look other places and you
really want to play control. That's kind of like looking at
the Mortal Kombat 1 footage fromthe Switch.

(51:30):
You just want to throw up. It doesn't cost you anything,
that's all I'm saying. All right, I'm moving this thing
on. I'm I.
Ball Kingdom Hearts again after getting as a.
Switch apologist. I'm moving on from that
conversation. We're done with this, all right?
So honorable mention #2 you, as many others have before pulling
three games in on me at once by simply pulling in the Mass

(51:54):
Effect Legendary Edition and pulling the entire trilogy and
in one pack playing the Loopholegame.
Well played, well played. Was was that your first go or
had you played it before? Before I I, I, I played the heck
out of those. That's the other one where
multiple plays. So my my Canon I have two

(52:19):
shepherds as one does. I have a paragon male shepherd
on Xbox and I have a renegade female shepherd on PlayStation.
I'm not going into the psychology of how this is all
broken up between consoles and. Genders and the consoles have
reality choices. The consoles have nothing to do

(52:40):
with it. And I think, I think I just by
default like I think, I think male shop was the default choice
because. Just plead the 5th on this one
and don't. Don't do it.
Don't do it. Yeah, so you've done?
You've done both runs I've. Done both runs.
I did legendary with my finishing because I like her

(53:02):
better. And just shout out to Jennifer
Hale, such a great, fabulous voice actress.
No, no, just like to mark mirror, but but his name he's
not as good. So the legendary edition
absolutely the best way to play this game hands down.
Like I there there is nothing you could say to me to convince
me to go back to my original versions and that Mako in the

(53:26):
original Xbox version that windows horrible controls and
the the the inventory managementof Mass Effect one if you
remember that nonsense that justno like they they they got a.
Little big for their britches. They reeled it back in, though.
They they reeled it back in Legendary edition like you got

(53:50):
to play the whole trilogy. That's why it's there.
You know, you, you is Mass Effect 2 the best of the bunch?
Yes, absolutely. That's not that's not a
question. That's that is correct.
Yes. But you have to play the
trilogy. You you need to see the
beginning, in the middle and theend of Shepard's story.
And BioWare, if you're listening, it better be the end

(54:12):
of Shepherd's story. I don't want to see Shepherd
come back in the next Mass Effect.
Don't do it. You can bring back whoever else
you want from the games, but do not, do not do that.
Right, Shepherd's story is done.Don't Skywalker this.
We're not, we're not. We're not doing this.

(54:33):
Now, oh boy. But.
OK, so that's that's the fact. You know, what's right about
this game is you've got that, you've got a little bit of an
RPG element, you've got fabulousstory.
I mean, I've this is my I think it's the first time I've really
got into something where you canreally influence the outcome of

(54:57):
the story significantly. And seeing how they carried that
forward through the entire trilogy is just, it's, it's
amazing to see that what they pulled off.
I don't know if we'd see anyone get that ambitious these days.
It just seems like, you know, the the with development cycles
being so long and I mean, it's already like, you know, you look

(55:23):
at the Final Fantasy 7 remakes, like there's not even anything
to you don't import your save. There's nothing you can get two
free summons. I think is is the grand total of
what you get if you start the second-half or it's the second
third with a complete save foul for the first game, this game.

(55:43):
That's a fact. Like who lives, who dies, who
you slapped in the face because they were obnoxious.
It's not just who live or die, but like somebody had to die in
the first game. Like they're, it's not like, OK,
there's a way around this. Like even in Mass Effect Two,
which I is my beloved, you can get away from that game and

(56:04):
everybody lives. There is not you have to pick.
You have to pick. You have to make a choice in
Mass Effect One, whether she dies, Kaden dies or she dies.
And that carries through all theother two games with with
impacts on the story. Absolutely.
Yeah. And and people are mad about it.
It's like, why? Why can't I pick both?

(56:26):
That's not how it works. It's called narrative.
Narrative structure. Author's prerogative, you.
Know, I never really thought about the people.
There were people who were goingto launch them both into Spain.
I never thought about the fact that they're people.
Like, let them both die, yeah. Well, there's that too.
That that's dark. Oh God.
And and you can't fix that aspect too because the survivor
doesn't come back until 3:00, so.

(56:50):
Any any like so again, how my question is so yes, there are
RPG elements to this game. There's there is magic
effectively there are you know, there's tanks, there's all sorts
of stuff, but it's it's also a very heavily, you know, over the
shoulder shooter game at the same time.
So what drew you into this? Not that you're not, that you're
getting exclusively RPGI, think you've made it clear that's not

(57:12):
just the case, but there's something had to pull you into
this game. I think so when it comes to like
what side of video games you talk about, books or TV, it
would actually say science fiction is my favorite genre.
I had a fantasy. But when you look at like

(57:35):
science fiction video games, it hasn't, it hasn't been a thing
until a little more recently. We've gotten some good ones.
But so this I saw, I think I sawmy friend's copy, he had Mass
Effect just sitting there. Xbox 360 maybe?

(57:55):
I think that was a three. 60 it was, yeah, I believe it was
three. It was because one wasn't really
that long of a life cycle, but it was.
It was the 360, Yeah. Yeah, so I'm looking at this.
I'm like, this looks cool, what's this?
And blew it up on his, you know,I'm aware of his house back in
the day. And later on I was like, oh,

(58:16):
this is fun kind of problem. This is like, yeah, sure.
I was like, yeah, the next thingyou know, it's history.
Like I'm getting into this like,hey, there's a pretty cool story
here. And like I can I can like I can
choose my background and I can choose what class I am and I can
choose whether or like I'm, you know, making these, you know,
and I don't want to call it goodme.

(58:36):
It looks like I I for the pet peeve.
I will, I will soapbox that Paragon of Renegade is neat,
good and evil, and it's and it'smuch more complicated than that.
There's a reason they there's a reason they don't call it good.
Right. But yeah, and then and then, you
know, PlayStation comes out and it's like, hey, here's Mass

(58:59):
Effect two, but where's Mass Effect one, guys?
Where is it? Where is it?
Don't worry, you got a motion comic, We got a motion comic.
Everything was good. We still got to decide who died.
Yep, and that, and that's what he had to do.
That's, that's, that's, that's how I, that's how I played
through my Mass Effect PlayStation back in the probably
with the PS3 then. It was, it was indeed the three.

(59:23):
And that was the first 'cause I went, I went to the same
question, 'cause I was at the store and I'm like, hey, yeah,
you got one. You have an Xbox.
No. OK, carry on.
Yeah, they fixed it eventually with.
I believe they've made it digital only.
Mass Effect One for PlayStation.Yeah, I do not know.
I only know with the Legendary edition, it's there.

(59:44):
So it's and again, it was one ofthose PlayStation Pluses, just
like it's thrown in there and like it's someday maybe, maybe
I'll go play the first one someday.
But also there's there's so manyother games to play.
I don't know what to do. Yeah, play the SO.
People, if you haven't played the trilogy, go play the
trilogy. So how did you react to three at
the time and then three after they kind of tweak something?

(01:00:08):
OK, we have we're good. That's that's enough.
That's enough of a snippet there.
We got it. Three's ending.
You know what it I'll, I'll say the same thing I've said about
many other things, that it it's about the journey, and if the
destination doesn't quite hold up, it's OK.
It was a heck of a ride and I loved every minute of it.

(01:00:29):
And I can just pretend that ending was what I wanted it to
be. It's, it's tough because there's
so many. I mean, you talked about all
these like forking all these forks in the road and the
decision tree and everything else that like you picture the
model spreading and spreading and spreading and it collapses
back in on itself just like, no,it all, it all comes back to
three things. You kind of had that they gave

(01:00:51):
us an unfair expect or we had anunfair expectation of BioWare
and and that of like they're going to have 572 different
endings based on the the 57 potential choices you could have
made in the branching decisions through at like that.
It was what it was. It was what it was.
And I don't need 300 different endings, but I did feel like the

(01:01:12):
three endings we got weren't even that different.
They weren't, I mean, there, there, there was, there was a
pretty solid joke that wasn't really that much of A meme about
like, oh, you can have the blue ending, the red ending or the
green ending. And and, and they did, you know,
they expanded on those a little bit with the with the patch, but
the original version of the endings really, really was very

(01:01:36):
similar. It's taken five games and we
make it to the end of the list here before we finally.
Five with an asterisk, Greg. Five with an asterisk.
You put 3IN Mine 5 and 2/3 to finally get a Metroidvania on
list, and it's 1 Axiom Verge. That's not even on your top ten

(01:01:59):
Metrovanias list currently. So yeah, Axiom Verge What?
Why? This is the Metrovania we're
going to talk about today. Yeah, 'cause I can talk about
Super Metroid, I can talk about Ori.
People know what those I'm here to talk about games that you
haven't heard of, like Disco Lesium.
OK, yeah, you've heard of Mass Fight, but I'm also here to talk

(01:02:20):
about Axiom Verge. So this is I pretty sure this is
like a one man project. He might have had a little.
Bit of a help. So before you get into it,
because I'm, I'm looking up, youknow, the developer, what they
do, the guy, Tom Hap, who developed this Metrovania known

(01:02:41):
for NFL Street and Tiger Woods PGA Tour before deciding to put
this game together. Yeah.
It's crazy. And so Axon Verge is a lot of
ways it feels like clearly inspired by things like Super

(01:03:02):
Metroid. You know, you've got this this
2D16 bit art style You're yeah, you've got that unfolding like
it doesn't Super Metroid. You've got, you know, so many
things that what where it differs from Super Matroid is
you've got quite the arsenal. Like in this game, you're going

(01:03:24):
to pick up a whole ton of different weapons and use some
of those to solve the environmental puzzles.
Like you're going to get a boomerang that you can use to go
hit switches. You don't see a lot of that in a
lot of the other Metroids. A lot of the other Metroids.
It's like your, your puzzle solving might be, you know,
Metroid's fairly straightforwardpuzzle solving.

(01:03:45):
Like, OK, I can blow this up when I get, you know, the
McGovern that lets me blow this up this, you know, you've got,
you're going back and forth using different weapons.
Oh, I've got a short range electric weapon that I can use
because it passes through solid barriers.
I can use that to hit a switch on the other side, you know,

(01:04:09):
combined with a pretty solid soundtrack.
Not making my list of soundtracks, but it's up there.
And just, you know, the feeling of exploration that you get from
Metroidvania. And just like, you know, you go
in blind. Absolutely.
Like, we'll use walkthroughs fora lot of things.
It's like, yeah, OK, I'm going to sit down and play 100 ROPGI

(01:04:29):
want at least like I want to at least look at like what the
major things I could like screw up and hurt myself for.
But you know, a 10 hour Metroidvania in like 10 hours is
like you're going completely blind and stumbling around and
figuring it out. That's just so much fun.
Just like bouncing off like OK, well that's a dead end.
Or is it? You know, that's always that

(01:04:51):
great feeling of like, I don't believe that this is a dead end,
but I don't know how to get pastit yet.
I'm going to play like a mental note here.
I'm going to come back to it. Then you've got even crazy
things where like in a given play through of Axiom Verse,
there's I want to say it's like up to like six different

(01:05:14):
randomly chosen weird side areasthat just can spawn or not spawn
in your game. And they're they like they look
like the graphics are glitched out.
It kind of makes you think like you're in this weird area.
You know, not he's a developer intended, which is kind of a
nod. I love the like the Easter eggs

(01:05:36):
out. I'm a good sucker for
devastating Easter eggs in theirgames to the fans when they know
what what they're doing. I mean, and we're still thinking
with the same theme here becausethis this story is the story on
this one is is out there. It's almost, you know, it's
almost kind of Disco Elysium with the your main characters
kind of very confusing. You're just trying to figure out

(01:05:57):
what how much of this is real? Kind of.
Yeah, yeah. So the story in this one is it's
all told, well, not all mostly told through collectibles you
pick up, you know, so you can kind of ignore the story if
you're, if you're more into justthe game play.
But yeah, the story is, is really weird and it's kind of

(01:06:19):
crazy. Yeah, I, I hadn't thought about
that being a tie, but it is absolutely a tie.
Starting acting for two, maybe even weirder again, I picked
one. I think one's slightly better.
One's going to feel more like a classic Metrovania, I think to a
lot of people. And yeah, definitely like, you
know, you're, you're talking about like, you know,

(01:06:41):
collectibles that take 30 seconds to a minute to read,
pause the game, read the collectible or, you know, at at
the end of the night when you get done with a play session,
like pause, then read all, read all the collectibles you picked
up. Take the time people, you know.
Yeah, they're not audio dialogues.
They're not, you know, narrated.But you know, this is a one man

(01:07:03):
studio trying to keep this down on the budget.
Will this game be added to your current 8 game list of top ten
Metrovanias? Maybe I've only got 8 on there.
I've only got 8 on there. It was almost a year ago though
that you made this list, so. Yeah, that might be.
I think it, I think it's going on there.
I think it is. I probably left room

(01:07:25):
intentionally thinking I would come back to list.
But now I am by the time, by thetime the listener here this
episode, there will be nine games.
I can't promise 10, but I can promise 9.
I can say you have Metroid Primeand then Metroid Prime Echoes,
but there is a there is a Prime missing on that list.

(01:07:46):
Yeah. Is it though?
I don't know. I let me tell you, I, I haven't
played through them, so I, I couldn't give you, I could not
give an honest opinion on that part.
I played Prime a little bit at one point.
I probably rented it from like Blockbuster and then we just
played it. Prime Remastered is talk about

(01:08:07):
beautiful like textbook definition of this is how you do
a remaster. You could not possibly do better
than that, I don't think. Took the original game
everything that was beautiful about it, modernized it, made it
beautiful and gave it modern controls.
Sold, sold. Now where are my remakes of two

(01:08:29):
and three? That's all I want to know,
Nintendo. You're very, very weird.
It's it's kind of very odd thingto announce Prime 4:00 and
you're not sure where where theyis it going to be one of those
like new Switch two games, but also is it going to release on
Switch on the original Switch first?
Is this our new Breath of the Wild?

(01:08:50):
I'm totally. Fit in there.
Oh my shot I think. I think it is released
simultaneously with Switch 2 launch, but also playable on
Switch with like some sort of like enhanced for Switch 2,

(01:09:10):
whether that's directly on the cartridge or it's a patch or
something, or it's just taking advantage of the switch to
native hardware. Find two and three.
I think those go one of two ways.
And I don't know which way they either come out 2:00-ish months
ahead of Prime 4 to kind of likeget get people salivating for

(01:09:34):
it, or they never come up. They're just, they're just not
there and the Nintendo's just not doing them.
There's a lot of 2025 yet to come.
They're not they don't announce things.
We again, I told people we see they don't announce more than
six months out at this point. They gave us Prime 4 just so
they like, listen, we know we announced it seven years ago,
but here it actually exists now.But they're going to have a

(01:09:57):
February direct that you're going to find out.
They're going to like shadow drop in the February direct like
they did with the the Metro Prime remaster.
They're going. To just drop, yeah, they could
do shadow drop on two and three in February, especially if we're
talking like a small release forSwitch to.
Well, I am going to pull out my soapbox here for a moment.
I'm going to I'm going to creak it over here and I'm going to

(01:10:17):
say when Kroner, you know KronerTrigger, if you go look up a
trailer for this, especially when it was released on Steam
like they they've got in there. It is a it is a dream team that
came together. But to put Kroner Trigger out
there, you've got Hiro Nobo Sakaguchi who created the Final
Fantasy series, you've got Yuri Yuji Hori.
I'm not great with the pronunciations.
I'm sorry. The creator of the

(01:10:39):
aforementioned Dragon Quest Dragon Warrior series.
And you have raised boy Kira Toriyama, the creator of the
Dragon Ball series and doing character design and like so you
have this trailer with this likeepic background to it.
And sure enough, for our future game info, Cynic has picked a
game that has created a trailer with just such a just, they're

(01:11:02):
throwing resumes out there and they're running down, you're
running down here. They've got a bunch of team
members who worked on Persona 3-4 and five.
You've got folks who worked on near Automata, Near Automata.
I don't know how you ever say it, frankly.
And then you've also got Neon Genesis Evangelion Ray in here
as well on this thing. So for anybody who has not

(01:11:23):
watched the trailer for Metaphor, Refantasio,
Refantasio, I don't know. I'm from Philadelphia.
I don't know how to say that. Whatever.
Get off my back, Ray. I'm sure Ray's already got a
pronunciation lined up for. It if I see the game, I'll I'm
gonna look at the game and then I'm gonna tell you what the
pronunciation's. Gonna be you're you're going to
watch the trailer for this Ray when we're done don't watch it
now I don't want you watching itnow because I want I want you to

(01:11:45):
watch it afterwards and. I'm oh, it's definitely re
Fantasio. There's there's like I'm already
looking at it. There's no chance it's not.
It has to be. So, so in a, in a truly epic
announcement to release timeline, this game was
announced in 2016, finally coming out this fall, October,
October 11th. Actually, it was it was bumped
up a day from from prior prior releases.

(01:12:08):
So studio zero was a game studiothat was founded by a bunch of
those folks who worked on the aforementioned projects there.
This will be their first, their first original game.
But I, I, I, I apologize your, your description of saying
Persona with a fantasy setting by a lot of the team involved
with three, three to five was probably a pretty good, pretty
good description to sell it on. But so, so not to steal your

(01:12:31):
Thunder from that, but I wanted people to understand the
gravitas of like this game that people may not necessarily be
aware of. Like there's, there's, there's
heft behind this. Yeah, like, you know, the
analogy of, you know, whether you guys did a great job of, you
know, pitching the Dream team. I was going to say like, you
know, imagine you're, you know, back in the heyday of, you know,

(01:12:54):
George Lucas before the prequel trilogy.
We're talking like, yeah, we've just done, we've done Star Wars
456. We've done Indiana Jones, too.
The first don't. Worry about Howard the Duck
we're not talking about. That keep going.
And but, you know, and and like George Lucas has a new movie
coming out. I don't need to hear anything
else. I'm going, you know, the there's

(01:13:17):
the same thing you told me. All these people, all these
creatives are involved, you know, Persona, Aidan Gallian
near Automata or again, I'll tryto pronounce it either man, I
played the game. You know, those are some crazy
heavy hitters. And again, you know, we've got

(01:13:37):
that kind of core Persona gameplay of we've we've got, you
know, a team building aspects and we've got this strategic
combat. They have added a little bit
interesting this time of a little bit that's getting away
from strictly turn based combat sounds like.

(01:13:57):
So I'm going to be interested tosee how that goes.
But it sounds like you can also like turn that off if you don't
want to, or just ignore it. And I think the, you know,
beyond just the relationship development, the game's about A
Kingdom in crisis, politically speaking, and trying to figure
out who's going to be running the Kingdom.
So there's not just like relationship building he talked
about with Fire Emblem, like, hey, come join Mike, come on,

(01:14:19):
you're coming over to my squad. I think there's there's going to
be a lot more politically that just from the depth of this game
really seems like it's one of those things where you're going
to find out like you make a movepolitically speaking and
someone's going to send an assassin after you because of
that. Like I it just feels like it's a
really it's a really deep the the trailer borders on
overwhelming for me. Not a bad way, but it's like I'm

(01:14:41):
like I'm I'm in. I this was not a game I was
aware of until you sent you know, you entered into the
library. I assume I did not check to see
who did enter. I figured it was just you
entering it in, but until this Ihadn't really gone and looked at
it and I watched the trailer in preparation for this and I'm
like, I'm in. Let's go.
I don't you do not need to twistmy arm on this.
And Ray, I recommend there again, like there's a very,

(01:15:04):
there's a very anime feel to this for me with, with all this
and not, you know, not in a, a disparaging way to turn anybody
off. You're like, I'm, I'm not in the
anime thing, but like there's just something very clean about
the the animation and the way it's here.
So it's really kind of taking all of this stuff together and
and creating what? I I.

(01:15:25):
I went from not knowing it existed 48 hours ago to like,
no, I'm this is what I'm lookingforward to for the rest of the
year, yeah. Well, because you know, the, the
with the whole anime's kind of hit this peak right now of
animations because they've, they've take, they've moved off
to just hand drawn, but they've kept the very sharp animations
to it and now they've modernizedit.

(01:15:46):
And you're seeing that with a lot of new anime.
And it's, I mean, it's just, it's gorgeous to look.
I I there's some shows that I'm watching just because they look
pretty at this one, because theysomehow mix the two things
together amazingly. Your homework after this is to
watch the trailer ran I'm. Trying to figure out if it's
term based or not. It's trailer.
It looks like it's both stop. Watching it on mute?
Stop it. If that's the thing it said

(01:16:09):
answer rate after it won't even tell me in like the category it
says RPG. It won't even put an A or AT in
front of me. I don't know.
It's mostly tactical term based,but it seems like from what I
understand that there's an element where like if you want
to kind of have that action RPG,like you can kind of ambush the
enemies and start like an actionsequence where you're kind of

(01:16:31):
doing that. And then like if if you don't
like if you don't complete the sequence like perfectly, then it
might go into the tactical to kind of finish the fight.
That seems like a great way to do it.
And you know, you got that you got that art style that just
over the top, like we're just going to like ooze theme from

(01:16:52):
every corner. And then the, the kind of a job
system and you're talking about going back to like some of those
final fantasies with the Fire Emblem where it's like you've
got these different jobs you canassign to your squad.
It looks like it just like you understand like over 40
different classes or jobs, whatever they're calling them.

(01:17:13):
They're they're probably using some made-up terms that they
invented for the game. But it it looks, it looks like a
lot and it looks like a great sort of thing to pick up in the
fall. And I'm hoping that it comes to
game paths, but probably won't because they're like Microsoft's
kind of backed down from that. And Alice is like, you know
what, we could sell this, We could sell this, or it's not
Atlas, but it's basically it's, it's the team that used to be

(01:17:35):
known as Alice. Every every article causes
relationships. Yeah, every article calls to
Atlas though. OK, I wasn't sure if I was doing
this, if they had slipped themselves off into a separate
Atlas, may just be publishing itfor this other development team
too. That's that's always
complicated. Things that yeah, that was my
understanding of it, is that like Atlas is involved from a

(01:17:56):
publishing perspective and whatever there's that whatever
relationship they have with Microsoft and Sega and etcetera
that exists somewhere in there. But anyway, well, I'm going to
take you to a quest now, a question from the Channel 3
history books for you to discuss.
I had three written down and asking about the scariest game

(01:18:17):
he's played. So we do something a little
different. Nah, do I?
Do I ask about your favorite achievement because we can hear
a little more about dysphalasia now.
I'm going to ask something that's going to get Ray riled
up. I'm just, I'm here for this.
I didn't even notice it, so right now I'm looking at.
Yeah, he sees right right now, sees the question I'm going to
ask, and I'm going to get him riled up and I can't wait.
So we're going to ask a gaming adjacent question.
Info cynic, sub or dub? Do you watch shows correctly or

(01:18:40):
incorrectly? That's.
Ray quit leading the witness. So I remember my answer to this
and I'm going to give the same answer, which is if I am
watching it on repeat viewing, I'm watching it.
However, I first did it because that to me is and so like I just

(01:19:03):
finished watching Spy Family andI watched that dubbed.
It's a great dubbed cast of thatone.
If I go back and I watch Evangelion, which I have done
that, I'm watching soft because that's how it first came to me.
If I'm picking up a new show, I'll probably sample both and

(01:19:24):
kind of see where I like the voice actors.
I'm probably going to try dub first because I'm terrible at
like paying attention and like I'm often like multi tower
skiing and like playing something on my switch or my
phone or whatever. And so the dove is a little bit
easier. Like this will be kind of like
be laser focused. But I do want to like give both

(01:19:46):
a shot. Just kind of see like sometimes
the voice actors just don't sit right for me in one one of the
languages. I I have to say that first of
all, that's truly the most info cynic response possible to get.
C in an A&B choice that's that'sperfect.
But I will just say that like, yeah, I, I want to say that

(01:20:07):
modern dubs are are better than than like.
No, I must. Agree.
No, there there are great ones and then there's like some there
there is like one team over at Netflix.
I feel like in particular who like they put the A-Team on some
of their dubs. And then there's also like the,
hey, we've just spread ourselvesthin on Korean garbage platters

(01:20:30):
and they're just throwing everything out there now.
And I, I, I joke and my wife will come in barging through the
door and if you see me disappearoff the screen, This is why.
But like they're, they, they just throw everything at her
algorithm at this point now, like, and some of the, some of
the dubs on those are, are like a cat scratching a chalkboard.
Painful. And I and I go through like I

(01:20:51):
reference the Miyazaki's, like you look back at like Miyazaki's
and James Van Der Beek maybe should be brought up on criminal
charges for his Castle in the sky performance.
And then there's other stuff like down the line where they
don't know they they, they know what they're doing now and he
gets whatever he wants. But I just have to say dubs,
dubs are not always evil. Ray dubs are not always evil.

(01:21:13):
Not always. I I solely for me, it's just
solely anime. I think the newer anime dubs are
weird. You got a lot of, I don't know,
this new like style that they want to go with, with all their
main characters. And I've, and this is me
watching a lot of the main ones too.
So the main characters a lot of times are fairly similar.
They've got, they've got a they've got a storyline that
works and they do it with just adifferent, you know, topics

(01:21:35):
essentially. But I think some of the older
anime dubs were better. I also just, you know, couldn't
watch the shows in sub back in the day.
Dragon Ball Z Dragon Ball Z was on Toonami.
So that's that's that's what it was.
Goku Vejita's voice changed, youknow, two or three times.
So that's OK. We just kind of went along.
Ocean Dub showed up for a littlebit.

(01:21:57):
So we just watched that for a little bit.
We got there. Thinking like thinking tensions.
One of the like I watched it waslike, yeah, so sub, sub wasn't
the thing. Like you're just getting, you're
just getting the dub. That's what you got.
And like going back and list andlike list.
I tried like, oh, I'm like, because there was a time when I

(01:22:17):
was, you know, much like you, I think, you know, I was like, oh,
furious. Like we got, we got to, we got
to do it. And I tried and I was like, this
sounds wrong. This, this, this sounds so
wrong. This is not this is not the
voice of tension. For me, it was a UU hacker show
was like that. I watched Jordan was in dub and
then, you know, later on I was like, well, let me watch this

(01:22:37):
thing and sub and I was like, I don't even know what I'm
listening to right now. This is that's, that's not the
right voice. Right.
All right. Last question we asked
everybody, what's been your favorite feature on the Channel
3? I love the quests.
It's great, yeah, seeing, and I love seeing other people's
responses and just seeing how wrong they are.

(01:22:59):
I really is there. I knew it was coming too.
Again, the most infocinic response you could have possibly
gotten. I love it.
I cut you off Quests. Quests.
Quests, yeah, it was great, though.
It is interesting. You learn, you learn a lot about
people, you know, you've all learned that, you know, I love

(01:23:22):
JRPGS by constantly finding a way to shoehorn them into just
about every single quest. But I do say, I try to be fair.
Like I, I try to say, you know, I don't want to give a
completely bad answer that's completely forced.
I always want to, you know, answer with something that's

(01:23:42):
like, this is the legit answer. Like, I might have to stretch a
little bit, but I'm not just like throwing, say, I don't
know, Mario Kart, Fortnite into every single quest, not naming
names. That's a great, great call.
Actually. That's the perfect note right
there. We're going to say we've made it

(01:24:04):
to the end of another one of your three podcasts.
Thank you for setting, for beingwith us tonight.
You can find a podcast at C3 dotGG slash podcast dropping every
Wednesday morning at 3:33 AM Eastern on all the major
platforms, including Spotify, YouTube Music and Apple Podcast.
I'm Ray. Dan puts this together on a
whole new system. Our theme music is still by

(01:24:24):
Caster Garden and for our executive producer, Joel Willis.
Have a good day everybody. Channel 3 is the future.

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CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

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Stuff You Should Know