Gambling as an industry should not exist. It’s just predatory.

I wouldn’t call any console I own a disappointment, even the Wii U had several games I loved and put too many hours into. But the system I ended up playing the least was the Steam Deck. It’s just too bulky to feel like a proper portable, not nearly as cozy as the Nintendo handhelds I grew up on. I get some use taking it to FGC events as a monitorless setup (and I will be bringing it to Combo Breaker 2026 next week), but that’s kinda all I ended up using it for.

I still don’t regret buying it as the most important thing to happen to Linux gaming, but it was a system I bought to have more than to use. I later bought a Miyoo Mini Plus and ended up putting far more hours into that than I ever did the Deck. If anyone ever gets SteamOS running on a device in that size form factor, they’ll get my entire bank account.

Add Puyo Puyo to the list of Sega IPs suffering a fate worse than death, they sold the series’ soul to keep selling Tetris over and over. We’re never getting a main series game ever again.

I have heard that every year for the past several years, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Kinda figured this was gonna happen, glad I got mine at launch.

I order physical copies online often, but can’t even remember the last one I bought at a proper brick and mortar retail store. Last year I did buy a copy of Soldam and Super Puyo Puyo Tsu from a vendor at a gaming convention, does that still count as retail?

I’d rather not name it, but the worst experience I’ve had came from a community small enough that everyone knew everyone. I’ve been in plenty of communities like that, many of them can be the nicest, but some can turn quite cliquey. One of my favorite games of all time is one I can no longer play because someone with power and influence in that clique used their influence to bully me out of the competitive scene.

I think there’s a very clear disconnect between players who want a power fantasy, versus players who want a challenging strategy game.

I notice a lot of players fall into the trap of only building for the deck itself, trying to force the kinds of hyperoptimized archetype decks you would see in a constructed TCG. The game allows for a lot of flashy combos that can feel like an unstoppable force, but if their deck only ever does one thing they will encounter some enemy that feels like an immovable object because it counters that one thing.

But then rather than accounting for that enemy’s existence and diversifying their deck to be able to handle it, they rush to the Steam forums to complain that the enemy was unfair. Because the deck was good, it had this cool combo in it, and that combo beat everything else up until this point, so clearly this good deck shouldn’t have lost!

It’s like building a team of all Fire-type Pokemon that only know Fire-type moves, and wondering why you can’t beat the Water gym.

Do you have any actual evidence, or are you just pointing fingers?

• Little Witch Academia
• Spy x Family
• Azumanga Daioh
• CITY: The Animation

StS1 had unlockable beta art after completing the True Ending. I guarantee this will be back, once True Ending is a thing.

I hope you’re right.

Doormaker is the best thing that happened to Act 3. Right now Act 3 suffers from being too much of a victory lap, there’s not much you have to do to prepare for the other bosses. The most fun runs I’ve had were when I had to scramble through the Act looking for solutions to get ready for Doormaker, picking cards and Ancient boons I rarely took before.

Unfortunately, we can’t have nice things because too many players want a power fantasy rather than a difficult strategy game. I’ve even heard people whine that A10 is too hard, not that the game as a whole is too hard, but that hard mode specifically is too hard and it would hurt their ego to just play a difficulty they’re more comfortable with.

Then it sounds like the real issue here isn’t that the narrative-driven games you talk about in the OP don’t exist at all, but that these games just aren’t being laser-targeted at whatever specific and narrow set of tastes you have.

And honestly, to an extent I do get where this kind of frustration comes from. I’ve felt like my tastes have narrowed with age too, and I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about certain genres that have completely faded from relevance. But I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that this isn’t an industry problem, it’s a me problem. Just because my kind of specific niche favorites don’t get catered to doesn’t mean that good games don’t exist at all.

My argument is there are fewer and fewer year in and year out.

When there are far more games being made in the first place, good and bad, I do not think you are correct at all. There are still tons of great games coming out, but you don’t seem to want to look for them as you’ve already shot down previous comments bringing up critically acclaimed modern hits.

I think nostalgia has you remembering the best games of the past, forgetting about all the slop that used to come out back then too, and losing perspective of the actual time scale in between those hits. If you compare the very best games from a full decade to just the average game that came out last year, that comparison will be very misleading.

If that’s enough of a narrative for you, most of the games you’re complaining about also have narratives with at least that much depth to them.

How do you feel about the narrative and worldbuilding in Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, etc?

What a weird thing to be mad about.

Yup, and I’d even say that the best FF is the one that SE was too afraid to put the FF name on. I just wish it wasn’t relegated to being a lower budget B-list project, imagine if SE put the same kinds of full AAA resources behind this that they put on the FF7 ‘remake’.

Does wishing that Final Fantasy would return to its roots and be a turn-based JRPG again count?