This might be more last episode than this episode, but the fantastic title of this episode reminds me that I feel obligated to say: I like Octopath Traveler! And I think the reasons people donāt like it are probably valid. The writing is dry and thereās a lot of it, but as someone constantly offended at the quality of game writing, I thought it was mostly a good dry. A brut script. Felt like reading drier Chaucer, which I think is a lot of the inspiration (as I type that, I again say that itās valid for anyone to immediately think, ābut I donāt want to read dry Chaucerā). The battle system and music are excellent, and while I can see myself reaching a āthatās enoughā point with the HD-2D (an extremely stupid name) style, there have only been two or three games using it over the last four years. Iām interested to see how flexible it is with these new versions of Dragon Quest and Live A Live, as the two games that have used so far it have really leaned into the desaturated look while these are going for a more colorful direction, and LAL seems to have more of a cinematic angle
Speaking of liking stuff, it was nice to hear positive talk about Pokemon GO, which Iāve just always regarded as pretty much a good thing. I open it up about three times a year, in a hotel or something, to see what kinda Pokemon are around. I also played Pokemon Sword, my first Pokemon RPG since Red, and had myself a pretty good time. I donāt think this is revelatory, but it does seem like one trick to having the occasional good time with Pokemon is to not be a part of the Pokemon community at all