Recent content by Bartholen

I rewatched Nope with a friend, since it's a movie that really warrants a second watch. I feel I was on the money on my first assessment of it: it's an allegory about showbusiness, its cycles of exploitation and hunger for fame, and how it chews and spits out the very people it builds itself on...

Finished Lies of P. Really great game, well exceeded my expectations, interesting story and for once a really robust NG+. Not only do you have access to all the weapons you've gathered, but you also have new dialogue that gives further story insight, and there's an entire new tier of abilities...

Braveheart, 6/10 I was curious about this, because prior to LOTR this was basically the high watermark of big battle scenes in movies. It's pretty good in terms of pure entertainment value, but it's complete silly nonsense. There is legitimately great stuff in it: the score and the...

More Lies of P. I'm going to start repeating myself somewhat, because I keep getting more and more impressed. I thought I was at a point where I might have been entering the final third, but by amount of bosses defeated I'm seemingly barely at the halfway point. I'm finally tuning in with all...

Working through Lies of P, and I'm very impressed. This is probably the best non-fromsoft Soulslike I've played. It's really polished, the writing's good, looks great, the combat's really good, and it's got some minor quality of life improvements that should IMO be standard for the genre. Like...

It's honestly kind of confusing on how Square seems to insist on reinventing the wheel for every major entry in the series: gambit system in XII, the paradigm system in XIII, the rough-draft, pseudo-real time combat of XV and VII Remake, and finally XVI's full action combat that feels like 20...

I ended up not continuing and traded in FFXVI. When I saw a Youtube comment saying you defeat the last boss the same way as the first boss I knew it wasn't going to be for me. A friend of mine who really enjoyed it said he approached it more as an interactive movie. Which is fine if that's what...

Well I have been considering Lies of P after my recent bout with Elden Ring. Maybe I'll trade FFXVI in and try that instead.

Okay, is FFXVI going to get any better? I just played it for a couple of hours, and hit the 5-year timeskip section of the story (about 10 hours in). And I'm seriously starting to wonder where all the rave reviews on release were coming from. This is neither a good RPG nor a good action game. It...

Thanks, now I know I defo won't buy it. I tried Dragon's Dogma (nutz) on 2 different platforms, and on both it just felt so frustrating, with baffling design choices every two steps. It felt like one of those games that could have been great with lots of simple fixes. Like how about instead of...

I've also finally gotten around to Final Fantasy XVI after like a year, and bugger me does it take its time to get going. I was just about to give up on it when I finally got to a more open area with a bit of exploration. Because up to that point the game had felt about as interactive as smahing...

I went on a bit of a nostalgia trip and installed Far Cry 2 again. That, and I'd been playing a lot of Elden Ring and Slay the Spire recently, which are full of all sorts of management, synergies and complexities, so I was craving for something simpler. More than 15 years later this is still one...

*knocks on wood* We'll see. Miyazaki seems like one of those guys who'll live to like 98 out of pure spite. Lord knows he's enough of a grumpy old man to do it. He'll die next to his drawing board, and instead of rigor mortis his body will keep drawing on its own for a good 2 weeks afterwards.

The Boy and the Heron, or rather How do you live? for a second time, dropped to a 5/10 from 6/10. I was hoping this movie would somehow open up on a second watch when you know what it's actually like, but it did the opposite for me. I could make neither heads nor tails of this movie. It's so...

That's probably the best solution, because that's just not an effective class concept at all without multiclassing. Spellcasters in the DnD 5e ruleset are expected to use their spells as their main mode of offense, and using any kind of weapon whatsoever is usually the last of last resorts when...