Narcosis

Makoto is the epithome of an awful protagonist. I'm still wondering whether he was made like that on purpose, but it's really, really difficult to feel sympathetic for him. I'd say that everything evil that happens within the story is only his own goddamn fault. I also agree with hetare protagonists and this preety much sums everything up. Yuuiji is actually an interesting character. Not sure why so many people shun Rance, though. His personality is played for laughs and it's especially relevant to everyone familiar with heroic low fantasy.

Another witty reminder to be proud of yourself, whoever you are.

I don't find game journalism of any kind to be relatable enough nowadays, although there's a couple of people in the industry I know and hold in high regard. If there's something I find interesting but remain highly dubious of it, I simply give it a try and check it myself. I don't feel the need to boost my ego with opinions of other people regarding things I like or not, as they generally never mattered that much to start with.

I expected those new songs to be a little bit harder, considering the rewards they give. KLab, what are you doing KLab.

Come on! Rance may be a bastard, but he's the best bastard that ever existed

I found out the token events are actually a lot more beneficial in general, especially to veteran players as they give a lot of rewards, while the required input is often minimal. I wasn't amazed when Nosebleed said a while ago he got a lot more than he spent, judging from our high LP pools; the only issue is that you have to be at least around 75LP (while 100 and more is a considerable optimum) and be prepared for a lot bigger grind; score match events are a lot faster (which allows you to grind more in return), but the overall rewards are a lot lower, mainly because there's no song ranking and reward sequences seem to be poorer as well. Regarding draws - the system is preety much RNG. In my case, I found out that full draws seem to always give me better rewards compared to single draws, but I'm an unlucky player in general. So far, since the time I got 2 inital UR's out of the scouting tickets, I haven't got any more of them except for one initial Eli SR. Though luck. I should try out the new songs as well.

Konami we used to know is no more, forget about it. They will soon move onto the gambling industry almost completely, while their studios will shift entirely to mobile market. It's not like it matters anymore, since all of their most influential creators have left the corporate giant anyway. Japanese gamedev industry is in a very poor state at the moment; they're constantly failing to readjust to modern times and often shot themselves in the feet. Those who still want to create games and remain faithful to their audiences already moved away from the old corporate business models.

At the moment it's really easy to end up in T2. As long as you're a regular player and remain LP efficient, it's hard to end up in T3 or below. It's kind of bad for them to release multiple events at the same time, though I guess it's just one more way to increase their profits, as more people will end up spending (and buying) additional gems. Meh.

Jokes aside, regarding gamedev - for artists, musicans and sound engineers - there's a lot of various places to search for; certain lead developers usually have their networks of contacts; aside from people they might have worked together in the past, it's good to know the industry as well. Not always, but quite often - they have a number of specified artists they'd like to work with. It's easier to hire a freelancer, than "acquire" someone, who you'd like to work with on a more than a single project. Those who barely got off the ground, have a lot of different places to start. Certain services like DeviantArt or Pixiv even have their own boards, where artists post their employment offers. For music and SFX - Bandcamp and SoundCloud. The demoscene is a hidden gem of it's own, with a variety of different sites, modarchive.com being one of the most popular. Those are the formal ways. Informal ways include lurking throughout the message boards, posted above. Both of them require a lot of work and messaging. A lot of people has issues with gathering members, especially those who already work professionally, because they are often unable to forward a polite and adequate query; they aren't able to sell their dreams and interest people. THIS might prove useful to them (although it's an article regarding communication with artists, it works nearly the same way for everyone else; learn to sell your ideas to other people in an appropriate manner). While any form of actual employment is an important factor, a lot of devs often seek to work on projects they see interesting as well; people rarely work on things they don't like and it's important to have that in mind as well, when recruiting.

If all that time usually spent by leads on creating dev teams would be used on learning and improvement instead, we'd have a lot more skilled devs by now. Trust me

I think you got me wrong. I don't even feel bad because of it, I just find it a nuisance that such a nice rythm game, which originally promoted sheer fun and competitiveness between players now follows the same path as any other F2P game with micro-transactions, even though there's no actual player progression tied to it. At least I hope the whole dev team is getting their share in the profits, but knowing how modern gamedev looks, things propably aren't so bright for them either. Even though it's not the first time, it's always sad such projects end as milking cows for their respective copyright owners and devalues them. You should know I just like to rant about stuff that bothers me, I bear no actual ill or anything (true story)

Why look for people to work with, when you can be a one man dev team.

They way they make things and keep being so humble about it is already hilarious by itself. As for the Castlevania successor, Igarashi should make a new game instead of relying on tested franchise. I doubt Bloodstained will ever reach the quality of it's predecessors; if anything, it will definately become just another disappointment.

At times I ask myself, why do I still even bother with F2P games. The unfortunate truth is I still like LLSIF and enjoy the songs but the ammount of enjoyment is definately a lot lower nowadays. After all those years, I learned to not bother with certain downsides associated with this business model, but it's really hard to remain blissfully ignorant, when the last enjoyable element within the game loses it's meaning. As a player, you ask yourself whether there's really any reason to put effort, when you're destined to lose straight from the beggining. As casual it remains, LLSIF is still a game which was originally built around the idea of competitive fighting. That's why events exist. It's kind of sad there's no real meaning to it anymore. I think you're taking it a litte to far; I'm definately not frustrated about something like SIF, but I'm sure a lot of other players definately are.

Last time when I got Binetsu Kara Mystery, I scored slightly above 400k and that was more or less a failed attempt. Never bother with the top ranking players, as the majority of them are crap. I'm actually starting to get annoyed that the last fun aspect of this game - competition - is slowly getting ruined, when low ranked players fail terribly at a difficult song and still get top places, while you score at the very bottom with an FC. Of course, it's not possible even with few lucky draws. You can easily spot who's paying to win and even if some of those people don't mean it (they just spend A LOT on the game), it's still an awful experience regardless. Aside from that, I only used one gem today and still remain within T1. Some funny stuff happened as well, but I'm to lazy/CBA to post pics, maybe later~

The creators of Sunrider are simply playing with their "franchise". They've done it for fun. This game doesn't have much of a reason to exist otherwise, except for a bunch of rabid fans drolling over the heroines. Branching off to create this will also surely affect the Sunrider's continuation. It's amusing to see western indie devs jumping onto the same japanese bandwagon regarding game spin-offs, even though we barely crawled out of mud. My personal opinion of Sunrider and it's creators dropped tremendously after seeing this released as their legitimate product. One can only rejoice they skipped voicing it.

The problem is that being literate isn't equal to the thirst for knowledge and unknown, which is the primal factor for human evolution. We might have more people, who are basically educated, know how to read and write etc. but that doesn't mean we're getting more intelligent as a whole. Back in the 18-19th century knowing at least few languages and being proficient with them, widely educated in terms of art and music, good manners and interested in a wide range of different topics was common for upper middle and high-class citizens. So was reading and writing. I won't even talk about voyageurs, philiantropes and those who were reinessance people - creators and engineers proficient in basically every single skill a human could know. We owe them a lot nowadays. Compare that to the modern times, where people spend majority of their time besides TV's and computers and don't do much besides that and sustaining their lives (work, sleep, eating). We might have more advanced tools but aren't actually putting them to good use except for a very little part of our society. At the same time, we are getting a lot more lazy and automate the shit out of everything, simply because we don't want to bother anymore and our current technology gives us the means. Contrary to some beliefs, reading is actually a very complicated process and requires a lot of focus, while certain topics are only avilable to more educated people. We can't forget that reading is mainly entertainment. Why bother with something so difficult, when there are other, easier and more accessible methods to entertain yourself?

INB4 a new indie handheld, designed specifically for visual novels. One can only hope it won't end like OUYA.

I'd say it's the epileptic tree orchard, but whatever. Some people simply like giant robots and EVA's are iconic.

The right keyword here is: balance.

That's one hell of a beard, man. Puts mine into shame, though.

> WIDTH > DEPTH Judging from the current japanese lineups in the stores I don't think this will ever happen. Neither I expect the growing western industry to change those habits either.

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