I'm like that with certain things that struck my autism in a certain way. Once you've infodumped something after months or years of deep diving it you don't really even talk about surface level stuff any more.
Like, imagine Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen talking basketball. Are they going to be like "hey Scottie have you ever noticed that basketballs are orange"? No, they're talking exclusively high level shit, because that's all that's left for them.
I hate to brag, but I would consider myself the Scottie Pippen of Super Mario RPG. Impressive, I know. If I talk to someone about it, I'm naturally going to gravitate toward obnoxious minutia like level up rotations and translation trivia because I've already done everything else to death.
I get it man. Ask me about Drakengard 1 or Nier Gestalt and I'll give you a multihour explanation of the tiniest details. The kind that drives away secondaries who only watched LPs because "ooooo its so clunky to play, ahhhhhh" because even they have no idea about the games.
Which is both endlessly amusing and frustrating with Automata now being mainstream normie shit, so now I get to be the autist among what was formerly a super niche obscure series.
Papa Nier best Nier. Caim is best dragon lover. One of these days I'll get around to playing DoD3...and maybe even DoD2.
DoD1's unfolding deep dive of peeling back a fairy tale story is really cool, imo. I always liked the theory that Ending A was the story in its most fictionalized telling, but as you progress to ending... C? D?... it removes the veneer, and you get to see the that our "heroes" are all degenerate fucks. Bloodthirsty scalies and cannibals and brocons and peadophiles, oh my!
And I love how by ending E, everything just goes batshit insane... shit I gotta replay this game now.
And while I really enjoy Automata, Gestalt (and even RepliCant) just hit different.
Nier:R 1.2 was still good... though, one detail I disliked was that it took away weapon elements. I don't think the elements actually did anything, but it was just a little bit more flavor to each weapon. And the new story bits were nice, but I really wish DoD3 was on something other than the PS3, because it has dogshit performance, and I'm pretty sure the new character in 1.2 is supposed to be an invoker, but never looked too much into it.
Any out-of-game reading material you'd suggest? Only ever read The Witch's Sabbath short story, but I have to assume there's other supplemental material out there.
I've finally gotten around to getting a PS3 emulator so I'm going to be giving that a proper go through myself soon. I bought it on release but its.....difficult to play on hardware. I got through Ending A back then but it was just too much to suffer through.
I always liked the theory that Ending A was the story in its most fictionalized telling
And, even though I hate 90% of it, Drakengard 2 shows that it basically fails to accomplish anything anyway and generally just pushes back the apocalypse a little bit.
It does say a lot about Caim as a character that even in the absolute mess of a game that is Drakengard 2, every scene he is in is fantastic and powerful. Heck the scene where he finally meets Angelus again still gets me emotional.
Any out-of-game reading material you'd suggest?
Grimoire Neir is the only one I think is really worth it. There's far too much of it, especially with Automata now, that is inaccessible due to never being translated or being a fucking musical/stage play.
Plus I have a huge hatred of Drama CDs, which is where most of it is otherwise.
People who play automata without playing the original are disappointing. People who thought the remaster of nier was a sequel are retarded. People who prefer gestalt to replicant are based, because it's better.
Going back to Drakengard 1 was interesting, not knowing any of the controls at the start made for a trying beginning, part of the issue would be my copy has no manual, oh how I miss it :P
The game don't pull no punches, and is surprisingly deep at times for its genre with the types of moves/combos you are expected to use just to survive.
I have a question about that, actually. About 2 years ago I think, I saw mentions of that game possibly being made available to play on the Switch's SNES app, with a new sequel being released. I saw that the game's producer had said in an interview that before he retired, he'd absolutely love his last project to be a sequel. But since then, I've heard basically nothing about it.
Do you have any other news about this? Or is it just never going to happen because of rights issues with Square Enix?
I don't think it's totally unlikely, but there are a few issues that make it more difficult than simply making a new game called Totally Not Mario RPG.
For one, there's a lot of bitterness between Square and Nintendo. They started making PSX games after years of making flagship titles for the NES and SNES. In response, when Nintendo wanted to make what was functionally Mario RPG 2 - Superstar Saga - they went with another company: AlphaDream. To make matters worse, AlphaDream had a bunch of former Square employees in it, including Chihiro Fujioka, one of the directors of Mario RPG. So Nintendo basically responded to the breakup by dating Square's sister. And considering Square Enix is still lead by a number of the same Square people of that era, and considering Japanese culture, that's an issue.
There's also the fact that AlphaDream, despite having exclusive rights to the series, went bankrupt. It's possible that the formula is simply played out and no longer profitable. Or maybe we just need another few years for the winds to shift.
I wouldn't count it out, especially given how popular nostalgia games are, but I don't know how likely it is for Square and Nintendo to get along enough to make it not simply happen, but be as good as everyone expects. Considering how nicely the Enix side has been playing with Nintendo, I wouldn't be shocked if it happened, but I'd lean more on Nintendo simply developing another M&L in house.
I'm not sure if I wouldn't call Paper Mario a better successor to Super Mario RPG than the Mario & Luigi series, but it's just nitpicking at that point. It's true that Geno's most recent appearance was in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, even if I don't recall seeing Mallow or the Nimbus people anywhere since the SNES.
I never looked into AlphaDream before, so that was interesting information to know. You're saying that they had exclusive rights to the characters from Super Mario RPG? Square Enix doesn't have them? If so, then it sounds like they should be basically up for grabs. That'd be one major headache less.
Still, I don't know what they could do in a sequel. Smithy's dead. We've already explored Super Mario RPG's Mushroom Kingdom, as well as multiple other versions of the land in other games. Did we ever get an answer as to where Exor and the Smithy gang came from? That sword literally had an alternate dimension inside its mouth.
I'm like that with certain things that struck my autism in a certain way. Once you've infodumped something after months or years of deep diving it you don't really even talk about surface level stuff any more.
Like, imagine Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen talking basketball. Are they going to be like "hey Scottie have you ever noticed that basketballs are orange"? No, they're talking exclusively high level shit, because that's all that's left for them.
I hate to brag, but I would consider myself the Scottie Pippen of Super Mario RPG. Impressive, I know. If I talk to someone about it, I'm naturally going to gravitate toward obnoxious minutia like level up rotations and translation trivia because I've already done everything else to death.
I get it man. Ask me about Drakengard 1 or Nier Gestalt and I'll give you a multihour explanation of the tiniest details. The kind that drives away secondaries who only watched LPs because "ooooo its so clunky to play, ahhhhhh" because even they have no idea about the games.
Which is both endlessly amusing and frustrating with Automata now being mainstream normie shit, so now I get to be the autist among what was formerly a super niche obscure series.
Papa Nier best Nier. Caim is best dragon lover. One of these days I'll get around to playing DoD3...and maybe even DoD2.
DoD1's unfolding deep dive of peeling back a fairy tale story is really cool, imo. I always liked the theory that Ending A was the story in its most fictionalized telling, but as you progress to ending... C? D?... it removes the veneer, and you get to see the that our "heroes" are all degenerate fucks. Bloodthirsty scalies and cannibals and brocons and peadophiles, oh my!
And I love how by ending E, everything just goes batshit insane... shit I gotta replay this game now.
And while I really enjoy Automata, Gestalt (and even RepliCant) just hit different.
Nier:R 1.2 was still good... though, one detail I disliked was that it took away weapon elements. I don't think the elements actually did anything, but it was just a little bit more flavor to each weapon. And the new story bits were nice, but I really wish DoD3 was on something other than the PS3, because it has dogshit performance, and I'm pretty sure the new character in 1.2 is supposed to be an invoker, but never looked too much into it.
Any out-of-game reading material you'd suggest? Only ever read The Witch's Sabbath short story, but I have to assume there's other supplemental material out there.
I've finally gotten around to getting a PS3 emulator so I'm going to be giving that a proper go through myself soon. I bought it on release but its.....difficult to play on hardware. I got through Ending A back then but it was just too much to suffer through.
And, even though I hate 90% of it, Drakengard 2 shows that it basically fails to accomplish anything anyway and generally just pushes back the apocalypse a little bit.
It does say a lot about Caim as a character that even in the absolute mess of a game that is Drakengard 2, every scene he is in is fantastic and powerful. Heck the scene where he finally meets Angelus again still gets me emotional.
Grimoire Neir is the only one I think is really worth it. There's far too much of it, especially with Automata now, that is inaccessible due to never being translated or being a fucking musical/stage play.
Plus I have a huge hatred of Drama CDs, which is where most of it is otherwise.
People who play automata without playing the original are disappointing. People who thought the remaster of nier was a sequel are retarded. People who prefer gestalt to replicant are based, because it's better.
Everything about the story works better with Papa Nier over Brother. Like hilariously so for being the non-intended version.
Especially in a series where the entire point of the original was to defy the traditional JRPG hero type, which Brother is almost to a T.
Going back to Drakengard 1 was interesting, not knowing any of the controls at the start made for a trying beginning, part of the issue would be my copy has no manual, oh how I miss it :P
The game don't pull no punches, and is surprisingly deep at times for its genre with the types of moves/combos you are expected to use just to survive.
I have a question about that, actually. About 2 years ago I think, I saw mentions of that game possibly being made available to play on the Switch's SNES app, with a new sequel being released. I saw that the game's producer had said in an interview that before he retired, he'd absolutely love his last project to be a sequel. But since then, I've heard basically nothing about it.
Do you have any other news about this? Or is it just never going to happen because of rights issues with Square Enix?
I don't think it's totally unlikely, but there are a few issues that make it more difficult than simply making a new game called Totally Not Mario RPG.
For one, there's a lot of bitterness between Square and Nintendo. They started making PSX games after years of making flagship titles for the NES and SNES. In response, when Nintendo wanted to make what was functionally Mario RPG 2 - Superstar Saga - they went with another company: AlphaDream. To make matters worse, AlphaDream had a bunch of former Square employees in it, including Chihiro Fujioka, one of the directors of Mario RPG. So Nintendo basically responded to the breakup by dating Square's sister. And considering Square Enix is still lead by a number of the same Square people of that era, and considering Japanese culture, that's an issue.
There's also the fact that AlphaDream, despite having exclusive rights to the series, went bankrupt. It's possible that the formula is simply played out and no longer profitable. Or maybe we just need another few years for the winds to shift.
I wouldn't count it out, especially given how popular nostalgia games are, but I don't know how likely it is for Square and Nintendo to get along enough to make it not simply happen, but be as good as everyone expects. Considering how nicely the Enix side has been playing with Nintendo, I wouldn't be shocked if it happened, but I'd lean more on Nintendo simply developing another M&L in house.
I'm not sure if I wouldn't call Paper Mario a better successor to Super Mario RPG than the Mario & Luigi series, but it's just nitpicking at that point. It's true that Geno's most recent appearance was in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, even if I don't recall seeing Mallow or the Nimbus people anywhere since the SNES.
I never looked into AlphaDream before, so that was interesting information to know. You're saying that they had exclusive rights to the characters from Super Mario RPG? Square Enix doesn't have them? If so, then it sounds like they should be basically up for grabs. That'd be one major headache less.
Still, I don't know what they could do in a sequel. Smithy's dead. We've already explored Super Mario RPG's Mushroom Kingdom, as well as multiple other versions of the land in other games. Did we ever get an answer as to where Exor and the Smithy gang came from? That sword literally had an alternate dimension inside its mouth.