Almace

I’ll throw in my one suggestion for Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (https://store.steampowered.com/app/428550/Momodora_Reverie_Under_The_Moonlight/)

Honestly just a really high quality experience that can be finished in around six or so hours. One of my favorite games of all time by many accounts: aesthetic, gameplay, atmosphere, and storytelling.

I tried a couple of demos from Steam Next fest. Without writing up an essay:

• Aden: Quirky game with reasonably difficult combat (when played in hard), cool music, and a story I ended up being surprisingly interested in. I was in it for the unique aesthetics and vibes and ended up being invested in whatever was happening.
• Until Then: Lovely little visual novel set in the Phillipines (which I love, as most games centered around Asian culture tend to be Japanese or Chinese focused). The dialogue is fun, the pixel art presentation is incredibly good and even has some beautiful animated scenes, and there’s enough intrigue and curiosity that really piques my interest in terms of the setting. It’s modern day, set about a decade ago, but with a twist of paranormal worldwide happenings in an otherwise normal world.

Actually drinking a Soylent Mint Chocolate right now. One of the better flavors!

Mostly Against the Storm and Granblue Fantasy: Versus Rising! I’m actually really enjoying GBVSR and as someone that has struggled getting into fighting games in the past despite really enjoying them and wanting to get better at them, this one has got me hooked so far.

As for anticipated games, the latest Momodora game comes out very soon. There’s also Granblue Fantasy: Relink which looks interesting, and the latest FFXIV expansion, Dawntrail, this summer!

I agree, though what I would have liked them to touch on more is how they absolutely played with the expectation that the villains might have been redeemable. I was completely expecting them to be and felt like I was just as tricked as the characters in the story when in turned out they really were just irredeemable monsters.

The writing took the expectation of “These characters look like humans and therefore must have human like reasoning and understanding” that’s been built up in previous, more contemporary fantasy works and then just played it completely straight in the classic fantasy style of “They’re literally just evil”.

I had the same issue with Dragon Maid where the main couple - Tohru and Kobayashi - are actually a fun, cute, well handled queer couple, but every other character after that (besides Fafnir and Kobayashi’s male coworker, Makoto) just really made me feel iffy and suspicious.

Overall I think this was a pretty good video discussing the topic and I think the author handled it pretty reasonably.

You do also kind of put all your eggs in one basket so to speak though. I don’t have anything against Proton and the pricing makes sense if you value all their services and pay for Ultimate (though by my estimate, less sense if you are only looking for a smaller handful of services). However, if you go fully into Proton for everything, you’re placing your trust into an entire stack of services and it can end up a single point of failure.

Actually very interested in this one! It seems to have similar energy to a couple of my all time favorite series, Kino’s Journey and Girls’ Last Tour.