Exp. Share Vs. Exp. All: How the Difference in Experience Apportionment Affects Your Pokémon Party

Pokémon is the only video game franchise I break out a pen and paper for before even booting up a new save file, the reason being that I outline my team of six. The Pokémon games are famous for having literally hundreds of birds, sea serpents, and rocks with faces you can catch and make …

Learning How to Talk to People From Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Talking to people can be hard. It can be scary. It can be daunting. And even if you muster up the courage to approach someone, what are you supposed to say? What's good to do in conversation, what's bad to say, and what's restricted only for close friends? The Support Conversations of Fire Emblem: Three …

Grinding Love Sources In Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Up until Chapter 7, provided you bought the Expansion Pass, the best way to level up a Blade's Trust is to buy Noponchos from Future Crafts in Leftheria and continuously drop them in a character's Pouch before running out and buying more. This is effective enough for achieving A-rank Trust, which unlocks all their Skill …

How Momodora 4 Says So Much About Its Protagonist With So Little (And How It Could’ve Said More)

How is it you learn about a person? The ways are countless. Insight into their thought process. The clothes they wear or how they style their hair. A profile splash in between chapters. Then, of course, there's the adage “actions speak louder than words,” which they do. And in the game Momodora: Reverie Under the …

The Immersive Hands-Off Approach of Hyper Light Drifter’s Tutorials and Design

Learning is attendance, and teaching is art. One of the very first things any game needs to do is teach the player how to play, and the tutorial is the game design staple for achieving that goal. However, not all tutorials are created equal, because how a game chooses to teach its rules impacts the …

Writing Sex the Not-Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Way

Human beings are extraordinarily horny creatures. You have to search the animal kingdom far and wide to find another species which likes to bang as much as humans do. Because of this extreme level of horniess practically unique to Homo sapiens, sex tends to slip into our media, which is very much the case with …

Valkyria Chronicles’s Juxtaposing Approach to Killer Cutscenes

Cutscenes tend to receive mixed reception among the gaming community. On the one hand, they provide a break from the gameplay by allowing the player to kick back and enjoy storytime, but on the other, they rip control from the player and force them to watch their character pull off the baddest ass stunts and …

Reworking Sword & Shield’s Gym Challenge

For the most part, my main topic of discussion on this blog is light novels, with a foray into the occasional video game, but those are just booty calls. My one true passion in life is Pokémon, and aside from a falling out during the Sixth Generation, the series has always had a place in …

Protagonists and Antagonists Discussing the Important Things in Life

If you're anything like me, you abhor the idea of talking to people you don't like. Rather than ask them how the kids are doing, you would rather stab them in the eye with a tuning fork. Or stab yourself in the eye because in that case, at least, you won't have to deal with …

Upgrading Assassin’s Creed: Rogue’s Upgrade System

It's something of a small miracle how in my post on romanticization I didn't once bring up pirates, the single most infamous example of the process. When someone says the word “pirate,” the image which typically comes to mind is of the swashbuckling, peg-legged, black-bearded, booty-looting heroes of the high seas, even though real-life pirates …