I don't know about Persona, but Etrian Odyssey is a fun series indeed. Have fun with your game!

As for FF7, I can see why some people wouldn't like it, I'm not a huge fan of that game myself, but it sure was a one of a kind game back then. They tried hard to make something different.

I don't see it as even being one-of-a-kind. Most of the mechanics are clearly derived from Final Fantasy 6 (notable exceptions being the materia system and the way limit breaks work, the latter feeling like a simplified version of Lufia 2's IP system), and the main plot twist has also appeared before.

To me, it's more like:
FF5 > FF2 > other early FF > FF6 (the late game save this, at least until you get Ultima and balance is thrown out the window) > FF9 > (by a huge amount) FF7

(FF8 doesn't actually rank because I haven't played it outside of a PC demo, but it would probably end up doing poorly due to issues like cutscenes and summon animations; it might rank above FF7 because it's mechanics are more unique, though I think the game might have been better if they threw out character experience levels entirely.)

(other early FF is something like FF1 > FF4 > FF3; FF3 does poorly because of poor random encounter design, where every random encounter in a given area of the game feels the same)

I consider the Origins version to be the worst (tied with the WSC version which Origins is based off). The main issues I have with that version are:
* Spells level more slowly than in other versions. Given how I felt spell leveling was a bit slow in the original, this is a rather major issue, and is severe enough that I recommend playing the original instead, even with its clunkiness and lack of auto-targeting. (The GBA version finally allowed spells to level up as fast as I like, particularly through the lower levels where they're not as useful.)
* The removal of Magic Penalties from weapons and shields, IMO, reduces the strategic depth of the game. (IMO, they should have kept the mechanic (it's still present on armor, anyway) and made it more visible, perhaps by showing effective Intelligence and Spirit on the equip and status screens; that way, players could actually incorporate that aspect into the strategy.)
* The fact that Life works 100% of the time in battle, even multi-targeted at level 1, is rather silly and makes leveling up the spell pointless (unless you are going to use it offensively against undead); also it tends to make it too easy to kill Captains early.
* Dispel now gets rid of Matter resistance first. This makes instant death spells even more powerful than they already are (though it turns out not to matter in boss fights; the only two bosses that resist Matter both absorb it).

The GBA version (and versions based off it) are much better, and is what I would recommend if you want to play the game. However, there are still a few things I don't like about those versions:
* Characters who don't act in battle don't get stat gains; this mechanic favors faster characters (which is a change the game did *not* need; evasion is already too important, as I mentioned in my previous post). (In previous versions, simply entering the command was good enough; in fact, even if you cancelled the command, it would still count.)
* The "globe" variation of the world map, which was rather unique, is not available in this version.
* They messed up spell accuracy. Teleport, in particular, is overpowered; it went from being the least accurate instant death spell to the most accurate. Given that it's the easiest one to get, and it also has a non-combat use, this change is rather silly. It's now pointless to learn Mini (outside of Soul of Rebirth, where you can't learn Teleport if you don't already know it). Personally, the original values are fine, except that Break should have been as accurate as Toad (formerly the most accurate of the death spells), and Death should have been the most accurate spell of this type (since more enemies resist it).
* I don' t like their decision of which Blood Sword to remove, and the fact that they replaced it with something boring, in a part of the game where the game is likely to get a little boring anyway.

By the way, why is my previous post (the first post on this page, assuming default settings) "low rated"?

I just started it up Axiom Verge and the only two difficulties are Normal and Hard. It's been a while since I've seen that.

I think the Settlers does that but I'm not 100% sure.

At this point I'm thinking "How's this going to go down? and "What are they basing normal off of?" Upon speculation it could mean it's geared toward those who played Metroid or the like at least once. Settlers is strategy and having played little to none of that, I would surely go down. Like, all my forces getting flanked, settlements decimated and towns raided kinda down.

Buying exclusively on sale and then supporting developers afterwards puts more power into the hands of gamers and ultimately rewards good games more than bad ones. Consequently DLC and microtransactions are a good thing.

Games are largely a visual medium and in general "show, don't tell" applies. Lots of text in dialog can be fine, lots of text describing what the player should see on the screen is not. In other words: Planescape Torment's writing is not good.

Fallout is a great game. Fallout 2 is not and borderline killed the series.

On the topic of Final Fantasy: 9 > 6 > 8 > 7 > 5 > 4
Though both Vagrant Story and Parasite Eve are vastly superior, anyways.

No narratively driven game without permadeath should have failstates resulting in a game over screen.

This is the greatest gamepad ever made.

Even without emulators or Wine, Linux is still a better system for gaming than any console, past or present.

Not mainstream unpopular, but potentially on Gog: in general, modern games are a lot better than the classics. It's easy to put on rose-tinted glasses when Doom is all you remember, but grab a magazine from when the Amiga was still around and look at all the releases. There was a time when Marble Madness was considered to be somewhat good, think about that.

Personal quirk: I love horror themes in games, but I dislike horror games. Judging by the reactions here to Soma's safe mode, that's at least somewhat scratching the realm of controversy.

Dan > Ken

(Ignoring the fact that you rank the worst FF I've played above the best one)

There are actually two significant issues I have with these two FF games in particular:

1. The fact that time does not stop, even during battle animations. This results in the action queue being constantly full, so when you enter a command it may be a while before it gets executed. In these games, I found myself, with battle mode set to Wait, frequently entering a submenu just to let the queue run down. It's annoying entering a command, only to find out that the character I gave the command to is effectively already dead. In FF9, things can get even more ridiculous with long summon animations (especially if you equip the ability that forces long animations) and auto-regen working during animations; by the time the animation finishes, your party is at full health and the enemy's Shell spell has worn off, allowing your summon to do full damage.

2. The fact that stat growth depends on what you have equipped at the time of level up, and there's no other way to increase your stats permanently or (baring a glitch in the US version of FF6 Advance) reduce your level so you can gain more stats. This has mutiple issues, including the fact that it penalizes players who take their time, it makes the precise timing of level ups too important (one of the reasons I dislike it when games restore HP/MP at level up), and it introduces the problem of missable stats. (One nice thing about FF2 and FF5 is that they don't have missable stats; I believe the same is true of the original FF3 unless there's a way to reach level 99 without 9,999 HP.)

So, how do you manage these two issues?

What about interactive fiction games, where the text is *all* you have? (Consider games like Colossal Cave or Zork, for example.)

One concept for a game where your thought wouldn't work as is is an adventure game where the main character is blind; since the main character can't see, the game does not provide any visual indication of what's happening.

Would you rather have failstates that result in a softlock, possibly one that isn't obvious until many hours later?

Or, would you rather have failstates that crash the game?

Those are not good or bad thing by themselves. It's how developer/publisher use them.

I think you missed the point. Descriptions describe what the player should see, because the game doesn't/can't show that. So the problem is not in the writing, but in design or game engine.

Grab a Steam client and browse all games in the store.XD

I've always felt PS:T is a bit a successor to the classic text adventures ("interactive fiction") of Infocom and co, some of which had tremendous depth in their writing. And then they slapped an Infinity-engine D&D part on - "for the masses". ;-)

Or when showing something is just not feasible. A few short sentences can set up a scene in detail and are read within a minute (depending on your reading speed, obviously). A cut scene to establish the same scene could take several minutes.

For the same reason I prefer detailed and dialogue where only key sentences have voice-over over full voice over in many cases. Reading is just faster... (I'm also not fond of audio books - they're a test of patience for me).

Monkey Island 2 originally had an Easy mode for people who "were afraid, had never played an adventure game, or were game reviewers". It was dropped in the CD version. After reading what was changed/simplified/deleted in Easy version (http://opinionscanbewrong.blogspot.com/2015/06/monkey-2-lite-differences-and-adventure.html?m=1), the only reason to play this is if you really want to see the story but hate puzzles (and then, why would you be playing an adventure game?).

More than a true difficulty setting, it seemed like a joke directed at game reviewers who thought previous games from LucasArts were too difficult.

Oh GOD!.. Let's see.

I believe ES 4: Oblivion was a very good game.
I also enjoyed Fallout 3 a lot.
Playing with Windows Vista was a lot more fun than Windows 7. :P

ALSO, the other way around....

I hated both Witcher 1 and 2.
I think Master of Orion 2 is a bad game when you are used to MoO
Civilization 2 was a terrible game compared to the first Civilization.

Actually, I go further--I prefer it when games don't have voice acting at all.

Given two otherwise similar games, I would choose the one without voice acting over the one with it.

Guess I'm old school like that.

By the way, with the appearance of voice acting, an accessibility issue that wasn't previously possible started coming up; games where they omit the text, leaving only the voice acting to indicate what people are saying. This is an accessibility issue because deaf gamers, who would otherwise be able to enjoy the game, can't tell what's going on, and could miss important information; this is also an issue for those gamers who, for whatever reason, choose to play with the sound off. (One other thing: Some games have the option to display text (typically called "subtitles"), but default the setting to "off", and don't let you access that menu before the first cutscene; this is again an accessibility fail.)

To be fair, I finished Curse of Monkey Island in "easy mode" (yes, the game had that too with puzzles reduced). And only after that I replayed it "on standard difficulty". I admit, I'm not very good with puzzles in adventure games, but still I think some of them were too arbitrary, so it was legitimate way for me to solve them knowing general direction where I need to look (like one with tarot cards) not spending a lot of time searching everywhere.