Regarding the format of the show, it feels like it kind of drags when you guys are going down the list of upcoming releases, most of which you don’t seem to be interested in one way or another. My suggestion is that you just go with what you really want to talk about from week to week, and don’t feel obligated to address every single thing. Guests are cool, too, and might keep you guys on your toes and from dipping into a bit of lethargy in the second half. Also, it seems like it’d be hard to maintain momentum for a Skype conversation for three or four hours, so, unless you add other segments, it might just be too long.

In short, Phil Fish is a dick. People call his irresponsible, juvenile comment “honest and blunt”. It wasn’t. He’s just an egomaniac who should be put in his place, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

Independent game development has grown a lot in the last decade, and has by now become a subculture in its own right. Unfortunately, this particular subculture is often plagued by notorious snobbery and a general ‘fuck you’ attitude. Why? Because it’s cool nowadays. Being crass is the new being polite. Especially when there’s no one around to punch your thick-rimmed glasses inside your skull.

I was genuinely interested in Fez. Once. A long time ago. With time, it became this hype-filled balloon which I no longer care about. Fish’s fuzzy persona didn’t help, either. I remember the first and only time I posted a comment on the Polytron website, asking why they used smooth gradients for backgrounds, instead of going all-pixel and dithering. This applied to the effects as well. I never got a reply, but seconds later I saw Fish tweet something along the lines of “OH MY FUCKING GOD … Did you see that last question???!?”. The tweet was directed to a fellow independent developer, who promptly replied with “I know, RIGHT!? I shot coffee out my nose!”. It was probably right then and there that I was done with Fez, Polytron and anything they’re involved in. Not that anyone gives two craps, but I won’t be paying for their games, that’s for sure. Voting with my wallet is the next best thing to punching those glasses in.

P.S. – I’m not a violent person and I don’t get worked up over ‘internet stuff’ easily, but every once in a while something will rub you the wrong way. This was one of those times and Phil Fish is one of those people. You can’t teach internet kids the respect they were never taught at home, unfortunately. Let this be the only comment of mine on that whole situation.

FF13′s problem is that they threw trash mobs at you constantly, making progress slow and eventually making battles boring. The places where the battle system came alive was when you played difficult bosses, as you guys mentioned. However you had to wade through hours and hours to get to it and by then you just want to throw the game into the bin because it offered nothing else.

Square Enix then listened to the bitching about the linear level system and bosses casting doom on you. In a game design point of view, casting doom on you is perfectly fine because it prevents you from playing like a retard; the linear level up system prevents overleveling and forces you to progress through the game.

The problem with listening to your fans is they know NOTHING about game design. FF13-2 is now far too easy and “fixes” the gameplay mechanics for those babies who didn’t like bosses casting doom on you and the inability to grind. A lot of other game mechanics, like the Mog Clock, just don’t work either. Mechanically its actually a worse game.

Its as if Japanese RPG makers don’t even play their own games – From Software is the only one I can think of who introduced/removed the right mechanics in their Souls series of games. I mean why does Tales of Xillia have both TP and CC when Jude can basically refill his whole TP with a few punches?

So I’m not surprised Edge can justify giving the game another 5. Its not a better game in any way. Some parts are better, a lot of new mechanics are awful, a lot of old mechanics that worked were thrown out the window, and the characters are still porcelain dolls.

Too bad Shidoshi isn’t too fond of Solatorobo. It’s such a charming little title… however, I totally agree with him about simplistic PSP graphics being somehow quaint and fun even though they are somewhat outdated these days. Games like Hexyz Force (in terms of its graphics) are the most emblematic of this for me.

Good stuff, as usual.

I really enjoyed doing the tactical challenges, exceptionally difficult but still relatively fair unlike a lot of western shooters that pretend to be difficult.

plzzzz

The only challenge I have is keeping my enormous amount of self esteem limited to a minor amount of arrogance (say, the standard amount for an American male) and striving to not become a megalomaniac. It is an ongoing struggle with which I’m sure Nick Rox can relate.

This is a decent enough podcast but in no way superior to WAHP, let not the disinformation of others engulf you.

Secondly, I think that this show is your best one yet. You do a really good job of keeping things entertaining even when you get personal with your stories and topics. Each time that I finish listening to one of your Miranda podcasts I feel like I come away with some useful knowledge or that I have gained some sort of insight into just becoming a better person.

Needless to say, keep it up!

I do have one topic request/question though: What is your opinion on the Kingdom Hearts series? jw.

I empathize with your recent main topic, shidoshi. Normally I don’t comment on podcasts (even on WAHP, le gasp!), but I had to for this one. Depression is something people don’t talk about too often in detail, so it was refreshing to hear something honest like this. It was pretty brave and awesome of you to discuss it.

Most of what you mentioned is a very familiar feeling I’ve had for so many years. Heh, but the comparison between depression and pedophilia? My younger sister was raising an eyebrow when she walked in on that part… (“Never take things out of context!”, I said). Still, I understood your point. There is a social stigma attached to depressed people, and it’s partly because of that that I often pretend that I’m okay for the sake of my friends and family. It’s probably unhealthy, but part of my own happiness stems from seeing my loved ones happy to see that I’m happy. (… Geez. Did that make sense?)

It may be cheesy to say from some random nobody online, but I sincerely hope your depression (and illness!) lifts soon if not sooner. [And, on an awkward and somewhat tangential note, red hair IS awesome. If you do become a zombie from your sickness, you'd at least be one of the most festive-looking one out of us in the apocalypse.]

Anyway, I rambled far too long. Thank you for this podcast, and keep up Miranda’s Sweets Shop! It was a good hour or so spent.

I would like email feedback if you have the time to read this monstrosity o.O Dosh is a lazy bastard that can’t talk to himself for an hour once a week!

i also liked this episode more than the last.

when you said you’ll talk about depression later in the podcast i thought you’d do it a bit more detailed..

aaaaaaaanyway.. please keep your onemanshow up!

Hopefully future episodes will center more on Japanese gaming culture and/or history. I’m a huge history buff and love listening to people ramble about that sort of thing!

I think the question becomes at what point is there a need for money past several million dollars per individual. What use could someone possibly have for sitting on ludicrous amounts of virtual wealth. Sure maybe 5-10% of the rich are actually somewhat meritorious, but in being absurdly over-rewarded for that aren’t they actually negating any potential merit they might have possibly had?

Money remains an important means of survival in Capitalist countries but it really doesn’t need to be. Charity shouldn’t be an optional “altruistic” sort of method, as it doesn’t even come close to solving the systemic problem. While ultimately this situation will be resolved via agonizingly slow decay unfortunately all that will likely happen in our life times is observation.

Hurray for China, hell with Japan (Sengoku period aside, Toyotomi Bro-fist), woe to Activision Blizzard, and charitable donations to From Software.

Money can buy opportunity, and in that opportunity you can make yourself happy. Let’s say my true love in life was doing podcasting—money could buy me the chance to not have to work a full-time job, and instead devote my time to my podcasting. In that case, money certainly has an impact on the resulting happiness.

Or money can mean that you could, say, open your own no-kill animal shelter in your community, and through that help a lot of animals in need. That certainly is a case of money buying happiness to some degree. Or donating money to something like Child’s Play, where sick children in a hospital will have games to play to help take their mind off of their situation and illnesses. That’s also a case of money buying happiness.

I totally agree with the sentiment that simply having money doesn’t make you happy, and that material goods bought with money won’t make you happy. But I’ve also always disagreed with the statement being as simply-stated as it is. *heh*

I’m sure you’ll hear from people who hate learning about their e-stars as real people, but screw that, it’s fascinating.

I wouldn’t worry too much about public opinion (such as this one, for example). It’s a personal show talking about personal things. Do what you got to do.

Hilarious (if sad) reason for getting interested in to Japan and while this podcast lacks a little Nick Rox it does serve to tide me over while I wait for the bi-yearly WAHP cast.

Was it good? Probably not. I don’t care, make more! Random aside: I’ve written a great deal about dark souls on my linked site if you’re interested in that sort of thing, didn’t notice the comment tag until today or would have commented on past 7 or 8 podcasts (might anyway in internet weirdness style).

Sometimes I don’t use that many parentheticals!

And I really liked the American view of the early beginnings of anime/manga/Japan geekdom, as I am from the old continent:
“Mai – the psychic girl” was the first manga I read – at the local library in the early ’90s. But since the library also had French and Belgish comics the grade of violence and nudity was not new or shocking at all. And here existed no anime tape trading. When anime became big in Europe they mostly already came on Laserdisc or DVD/VCD.

As for staying with the family of your girlfriend: Yeah, that normally means that you are committed. I have heard a lot of stories about the misunderstandings that might result in…

*…waiting for more episodes…*

It looks Awesomeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

Looking forward to more if you decide to continue with it!

What are you talking about??? It clearly showed that their planet had died and they made a machine to teleport them to jupiter. Because it’s a similar environment to their homeworld.

And at the end of the show, you see Setsuna F. Seiei and Gundam 00 travel through the alien portal.

@Vaughan I think what came from Jupiter was more like the planet itself attacking rather than aliens from the planet.

Not really aliens in the Star Trek/ X-Files sense.

I’m definitely pumped for Solatorobo (I would have imported it from Europe if Xseed hadn’t announced it).

Casey said everything I’ve wanted to hear about the whole Xeno/Last Story debate.

My wii has been collecting dust for the last 7 months, and it looks like that trend will continue until Zelda. That is fucking ridiculous when they have games like Xenoblade and Last Story already in English that could have filled that void perfectly.

I haven’t picked up a 3DS and I honestly don’t give a shit about the Wii U. If they are going to make a habit of not releasing Monolith’s RPGs and work by Sakaguchi, then I’m ready to jump ship next gen.

Look, I respect your opinion on things Shidoshi, I do — but you can’t call yourself a gamer if you haven’t played Ocarina of Time. Seriously, WTF.

Wii U is a stupid name, the controller can’t even do multitouch (so forget two-player games like air hockey using just one controller), it doesn’t upscale Wii games, and some of the demos looked retarded (who wants to mount that thing onto a gun, or put it on the floor to show a golf ball when you swing?). The fact it can only stream in the same room as the console is another major issue. It’s also not much of a bonus to stream content when most families have multiple tvs… maybe that’s a selling feature in Japan, but not in the U.S..

Also, the system doesn’t appear to be enough of a graphical leap. If Sony and Microsoft announce new systems in 2013 for release in 2014, Nintendo will only get 3rd party support (if they do at all) for 2 years before their system will be underpowered yet again.

Some of the best-looking Wii titles weren’t at the show (Last Story, Xenoblade, Pandora’s Tower, Earth Seeker). That’s some bullshit right there. They didn’t even show Dragon Quest X, which could have been huge.

The 3DS was the best thing they had there. Luigi’s Mansion 2 looks neat. I don’t get why Kid Icarus has a multiplayer mode, seems kinda pointless. It’s also sad that Sakurai has seemingly been forced into making another batch of Smash Bros. titles (versions for the Wii U and the 3DS? WTF?).

Also, PS Vita launching at the same price as 3DS was the announcement of the show.

Keep it up!

I think, in saying that, you just did! *laughs*

The NGP is going to be WAY more than $250 just based on the tech inside of it. I’m expecting it to sell for not a dollar under $399. They’re not going for the same market at all; they’re all about high end, classy, status-symbol items. And the games will be more expensive than 3DS games as well.

And for what? So you can play Metal Gear Solid 4 or Uncharted on the go? Personally I’d rather play those on a big screen television. And are companies going to pour the same development budget into NGP games as they do PS3 games?

I’m very disappointed in you, young man.
Anyway, I’m going to address each of your grievances one by one.

1) “Dragon Quest is an absolute crap series.” says the man who has played 1 Dragon Quest game in the past 20 years.
What if I played Street Fighter EX and made the same claim about the Street Fighter series? Or what if I played Final Fantasy 14 and said the Final Fantasy series is crap?
You skipped the whole Zenithian Trilogy (4, 5, and 6) even though they were handed to you on a silver platter via the DS remakes.

2) “it is a game in love with tedium, making you do pointless stuff so you can feel good about wasting your time” says the man who has logged how many hours on World of Warcraft?
Dragon Quest 9′s quests are optional. They’re based entirely on MMORPGs and are there to prolong the experience IF YOU WANT TO. Yes, most of them are lame, I will agree,
but some of them will actually test your skills in battle, such as the Armamentalist class you wanted to unlock.

3) “Resurrection spells that can fail” Yeah, so what? It makes the game harder. It kinda makes it matter more whether you let your characters die or not, if they can’t be revived so easily, doesn’t it?

4) “Every town I get to, oh hey, we’ve got a problem for you to solve!” This is a complaint that I can understand, at least initially. It’s weird, and it feels very old-fashioned.
But as you play other titles in the series, you can’t help but be charmed by the inventiveness and imagination shown in each new scenario. In other RPGs, no one really gives
a shit about the NPCs they find in towns, do they? But in Dragon Quest, each NPC is given multiple lines of dialogue depending on the circumstances. And each scenario has
been lovingly crafted to be it’s own little adventure. It also means they don’t take the over-arching plot so seriously. It’s never so serious in Dragon Quest, unlike so many JRPGs
that are overflowing with badly-written melodrama or that substitute substance with graphics or movie scenes.

5) The part of the game where you are given an option and if you refuse, it tells you that you can’t refuse. That has to do with the hierarchy of the Celestrians. You have to
do what your elders tell you to do, so even if you didn’t want to give up the fruit, you HAD to. This ties into one of the themes of the game, which is that it is actually preferable
to be human than to be a Celestrian. Near the beginning of the game, certain Celestrians seem to deride humans, but by the end of the game, by becoming human, you are able
to fight the final boss and save the world. I think they deliberately set up that question that way because most players will not want to give up their hard-earned fruit.

And as you mentioned, it’s more a problem with JRPGs as a whole than just Dragon Quest. There are many examples of this sort of thing, for a recent example look at Golden Sun:
Dark Dawn. You can choose one of four emotions to respond to questions, but it doesn’t really have any effect and usually just responding with a smile will yield the best retort.

6) “I’m not going to make fun of you for liking it.” And I won’t make fun of you for liking Vocaloid games.

Though once I found that out I was disappointed that there was not some dirty secret behind it all.

http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/04/08/mamorukun_killzone/

and Killzone 3 should reach about 20k, Gulti must have expected very low sale or something

Shame, I missed the live show, sounded lot of fun

While it is bad form to have so much DLC day one, offering xp points and extra money are actually GOOD forms of DLC. I say this not because I would actually purchase anything of the sort, but because it is an option. As a player, I can EARN the xp and money, or I can BUY it; I have that option.

The costumes available? I can buy them or not get them at all. There is no means to which I can earn them. In this respect, I actually prefer the selling of items, xp, money and the sort.

The really bad thing about DLC is that it’s taking away from what made games re-playable: unlocking content. What used to be an unlockable bonus, such as costumes in a fighting game (SFIV), is now only available as DLC. Offering content as DLC would be OK if there was also an option for earning it though the game; similar to earning XP in a tales game or just buying it.

Anyways, great podcast as always. Missed your first live cast, hope I can catch it again at some point. A live chat would be pretty cool.