Some games I replay a lot, but always on a fresh save. I think I’ve finished Dark Souls about 10 times without ever touching NG+.

Notable exceptions are:

• Nier Automata, although you kind of have to if you want the whole game and it still brought down the experience for me.
• Chrono Trigger, for the quick kill on Lavos. I did not play much of the NG+.

Who cares? Just like most things your average programmer relies on, they are written by smarter or at least more specialised people to make your job easier. They have learned to write memory-safe code so you don’t have to.

Fits in nicely with the recent article about conservative men having trouble dating. Maybe don’t antagonize women?

Continuity. Nothing ever matters with comics. Superman was a communist, a nazi, a zombie, a literal god and everything inbetween. But most commonly, he is about the same he was 50 years ago. Meanwhile I’ve been growing up alongside famous manga characters. I could be following Naruto to this day and he’d be roughly my age at most points.

Variety. I’m not into comics, I admit, but almost every popular comic I’ve seen is about some kind of superhero. Manga on the other hand have a wide range of topics and target audiences.

Accessibility. I can read a lot of manga right now. Offical, free and online (at least the most recent chapters). There’s no such thing for comics. And while we’re at it: Manga release at smaller chunks in shorter time intervals, which keeps more attention. Being black and white does help, I’d assume.

Anime. They are mass produced and serve to promote manga. There is no equivalent with comics and extended media like cartoons or movies and such often follow their own storyline. Assuming I’d be into the MCU, there is no single comic I could read to see exactly what’s next. If I watch a season of Jujutsu Kaisen, I can look up the correct chapter and continue the story seamlessly.

I don’t play actual shooter myself, however, both Pokemon Snap games fit your description - might be worth a shot.

It’s a pet peeve of mine, I hate stealth sections. Waiting around just isn’t fun and most stealth sections are just that.

However, that was years ago. I haven’t encountered one in a long time since I mostly stopped playing AAA games - by now these games are an amalgamation of so many worse design decisions, I almost miss the time stealth sections were my biggest issue.

Back on reddit, I mostly interacted with communities relating to JRPGs. There are some communities over here, but at most they post some trailers every now and then. There are also some more focussd communities about Dragon Quest, Xenoblade or SMT - all of them practically dead. I don’t think there is an instance.

I could go over to a programming related one, the german instance or even one of the vegan instances for secondary ‘interests’, but those aren’t things I often find myself posting about online to be honest. They seem to be mostly about memes anyways.

It’s quite easy, actually. I usually play everything years after release, however, if I’m really into a certain series, I’ll buy it right away. If I don’t care for the wait, I probably don’t care enough about whether or not a sequel is being made.

Of course that only works if you don’t get hyped easily. I play a lot of games, but usually only 1-2 per year are released within said year.

Unfortunately, there is no instance matching my interests. There are a number of communities across different instances, but it seems like several people tried to make their own, didn’t interact with each other and all of them are long dead.

Once I find such an instance, I’ll switch over. I’ve been meaning to leave .world anyways.

While I do agree with the problems identified, I can’t help but think they also made forums a lot better. Due to the lower discoverability and higher effort to actually join communities felt more personal. You interacted with smaller groups and came to know specific people. I still have friends from back then.

On larger platforms, I never had that. Even lemmy, which is small in comparison has enough people that I barely even think about specific users. Let alone speak with them on a personal level.

Because people liked the idea so much with FF7? /s

For the sake of adding something new, X is pareto optimal in terms of having both the best and the fewest games.

• Xenogears
• Xenosaga (maybe, haven’t played it yet)
• Xenoblade anything
• X-COM anything

I’d probably be content with only playing games from the Xeno- meta-series alone.

Anything Dragon Quest needs to be on the list!

Despite loving the genre overall, I bounced off KoA multiple times. Maybe it’s time to give it yet another go. I just wasn’t in the mood for MMORPGs - which the IP should have become iirc -, I guess.

I’ve come around to really liking them. In short, they vastly improve dungeons in my opinion.

Most RPGs don’t manage to create interesting battles outside of boss fights. Heck, an increasing amount of RPGs fails to create any kind of challange. However, random encounter can add another layer to dungeons: resource management. You have to plan out how to tackle fights in order to get through the dungeons with your limited items/MP - do you sacrifice more HP or do you go for your strongest attacks? How much exploration can you get in? Do you need to be extra careful and plan for stronger rare encounters? Maybe even plan around lvl up healing.

Sadly, this layer is easily removed. Overworld encounters? Just dodge everything. Adjustable encounters? Grind just enough, go heal and disable encounters. Non-challanging fights? Just use basic attacks. Healing stations? No need to plan anymore. Ideally, the dungeons provides no healing at all - especially not before encountering the boss.

If you’re interested in a game with great dungeons, I’d recommend every single Etrian Odyssey.

I think the second FF7 part isn’t on steam yet? But personally speaking, while I’m slightly interested, I not to eager on these games. FF16 semms to have cut back on too many RPG mechanics for my liking and FF7 just isn’t complete yet. I’ll have another look once the ‘full game’ is out.

FF16 and FF7 are the only PS5 exclusives I would consider, but two games aren’t enough to buy a new generation - one that’s almost over even. Maybe release some graphically worse PS4 versions like almost everyone else? Oh, and PC ports of course if they haven’t.

I honestly don’t even think vanilla Skyrim was that good of a game. It had nice world building, but the combat sucked, the main story was kinda whatever, it was glitchy and a lot of systems were poorly thought out. It’s only ever been the promise of a good game which was mostly found in mods.

I’m still waiting for a reason to get a PS5 at all, everything I’ve been interested still got released on PS4 too - except for one single game.

I really don’t care for better specs anymore, I probably couldn’t even tell PS4 and PS5 games apart without a side-by-side comparison. Not to mention, to see a difference at all I’d need a new TV on top of the console. Not gonna happen anytime soon.

They very much are for a lot of people. Lines goes up, you can give yourself a nice bonus payout and if things come crashing down you leave. With your golden parachute of course.