One of my minor quibbles with Forgotten Land was that it felt like a lot of copy ability movesets got simpler (somewhat balanced by how being 3D added depth), so I'm really excited to see they're going further with it now.

Years back my arachnophobia got bad enough that looking at a spider made me nauseous. I decided the next time I saw one I would force myself to stare at it until that feeling went away. I guess that's more brute force than strategy but it did work.

a decade of my life accepting that it probably wouldn't happen. i can't believe we're in a world where we get this.

a bad biscuit hammer anime, an alright sengoku youko anime... keep it going and give us the good spirit circle anime.

For the record though I'm nowhere near done with postgame and a lot of what I'm saying is based off of my hopes.

If it turns out that the ultimate challenges don't push as hard as I want, then I'll be disappointed.

Anyway yeah the story is nothing. Lore does not equal engaging writing for me.

Ultimately though, it feels to me like SR but with some fun progression at first, and then the complexity of build variety and more complex tools to use, and I adore that. I just wanna hop into raids and lock in in the same way I do for SR.

But if the style doesn't hit for you I 100% understand losing interest.

The main story definitely could have been harder, and I can see it feeling like cheap gadget-spamming thrills along the way. It had to be easy enough even on Survivalist to let most people beat it.

That way, the postgame is what pushes you to play better. I'm playing the postgame for that hectic feeling to keep going and escalate, and I want the rewards to stay minor so that my power doesn't keep up with the difficulty, but there's just not nothing.

It feels to me like the point is to get to where you can keep doing those hard SR-style raids indefinitely, and the main story is just to teach you the mechanics and give you some fun progression. The progression has to halt/hit diminishing returns while the challenges get harder.

Also the SR-like objectives and boss synergies just give a pressure that SO never did. I don't think Raiders captures everything great about SR but it gets a lot. And adds a lot of new.

I saw some saying that it lacks incentives to keep playing post-game but to me this is the appeal.

SO was basically just another gamble-for-synergistic-builds roguelike, and it being all about building up main weapon power meant it typically culminated in spamming that rather than playing better. The gadgets being secondary and having cooldowns means you still have to be strategic.

I love it. It captures the hectic multitasking of Salmon Run for me where I'm constantly making subtle tactical decisions on what to prioritize, some without even thinking about it. The gadgets make for a way more fun formula than Side Order IMO.

the premise of this movie always reminded me of fanfics built around cheap satisfaction. you get to feel cool just for knowing beatles songs, not putting in any work. not judging it in niche online stuff but it feels weird to see in a mainstream movie.

Finally, I'd add that the fact that we presently value ideas over execution so much is possibly itself a consequence of corporate propaganda, as corporations are incentivized to invest in stories that can most effectively be further monetized through merchandising and other rent-seeking behavior.

All human creativity is inherently valuable. I fundamentally disagree with the idea of morally prescribing what forms of creativity are valid, especially if it's being codified into law. Humans naturally adapted and adjusted the tales they passed down orally, and humans naturally write fanfic.

And again, this change would unlock so many benefits.

Consider a book like Gregory Maguire's Wicked. A popular book with new, valuable things to say. And literally just a fanfic.

How many great Wicked-like stories have we been deprived of, because of copyright?