Cool to see you mention Golden Idol since I coincidentally played both games this month too! (you didn't mention the second game though?) Regarding DLC, I also don't think they stood out as much as the base game, but I don't think they're a bad time. They don't retroactively ruin the main storyline or anything like a lot of prequel content is wont to do, they're just a bit lower quality in comparison.
Sad that you couldn't get into Obra Dinn, i remember there were some accessibility options you could try, or maybe the high resolution mod which seems to reduce the effect.
Broke down and made an account to finally comment on your posts. It's cool to see someone put so much time into reviewing a side of the internet I really care about.
Glad to see you enjoyed the RE series. It's a classic for a reason, and RE4 has a huge influence on the industry for better and worse. May I recommend its sibling series: Silent Hill? The first three are easy recommends, with a tentative recommendation for the fourth and the recently released "f" if you want more. Ideally, emulate the first three and use "Silent Hill 2 Enhanced Edition" which is a fan made patch for the second one, but the remake is good enough if you don't want the hassle of patching the PC port (which is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain legally).
It's a shame to see so many authors online (especially fanfic authors) using AI to create stuff. I assumed that a community writing stories about stuff they're passionate for would do it purely for "the love of the game," but I guess I misjudged the SB/SV crowd. I tend to drop AI written stories even if I don't figure out they're made that way because they lack a certain "sauce" more amateur but authentic stories do. Or maybe I'm just subconsciously noticing it? Raw output cannot compensate for a meandering story that doesn't go anywhere.
Your note about Gundam/Evangelion was pretty funny because it's a bit of a meme in the mecha community to describe a new series with "This one isn't just about giant robots, but mental trauma and the horrors of war!" as if the foundational material wasn't built on those themes.
Thanks for posting. I eagerly await the first of every month to read your posts.
“Don’t let me gush over this too much” … I think you may have forgotten to gush? I’m hearing “MC is neurotic and manipulative” and “feels like it was written by a Sociology student” as the two concrete things that are good about this, which, uh, is perhaps a little faint as praise goes? Anyway I’m not doubting it’s good, and “the next Worm” is a good selling point for me, more just curious about your recommendation given that the most of the review seems to be reasons NOT to read it
I was going to suggest the Gotham Goon Gacha fic, so was pleasantly surprised to see that you got to it already, lmao. The Techno Queen comparison is apt, I haven't thought about that fic in years, which is honestly pretty unsurprising.
Hello. I stumbled across your blog a little while ago, and I found some of your recommendations to be fairly good. I enjoyed Chasing Sunlight and The Northern Caves.
I've seen you mention steampunk, minecraft and the SCP foundation- although perhaps only it's modern form- derisively. I'd be interested in hearing an elaboration of your thoughts on these topics. I'm not going to try and debate you into caring or something insufferable like that, I'm just genuinely curious as to your reasoning.
One other thing that I'm interested in is that your review of Lord of the Mysteries shows up as your top post, despite far lower likes and comments. Is this accurate, and if so do you know why? I personally tried to get into the series previously but the awful prose ground me to a halt.
Thanks for the recommendations and regular reviews of the many peculiarities of a niche fiction format.
> your review of Lord of the Mysteries shows up as your top post, despite far lower likes and comments. Is this accurate, and if so do you know why?
I also don't know for sure, but I suspect it's based on views, and it's because at least when I posted it it was the biggest English review of the book. When you googled "lord of the mysteries review" it was the first result. It's pretty high still.
Speaking of, it just got a new English translation thanks to the popular anime, so you can read that if the old one defeated you. I haven't read it, but I hear it's much better. The only issues are that it's physically published and hard if not impossible to find elsewhere, and that it's not complete yet.
> I'd be interested in hearing an elaboration of your thoughts on
> Steampunk
Dunno, it's an aesthetic masquerading as a genre, and this leads to lower quality fiction being produced based on it, because there's nothing to grab onto (for example, with Fantasy you have obvious hooks like prophecies, royal lines, races in conflict with each other, etc).
Its fans also tend to be annoying, they're close in culturespace to m'lady fedora types. Pop culture example here: https://youtu.be/uPyK3SJ3yCc?t=253
I think the "greatest steampunk work" often pointed to is Girl Genius, and that's infamous for a very very slow update rate combined with negative plot progression, so it's not getting any help from masterpieces. Rational fiction also has annoying fans, but it brings something to the table.
> The SCP foundation
Nah, I love SCP. I dislike *modern* SCP. It's just slowly worsened over the years, with a combination of rehashes and extremely long articles that should have just been optional logs linked from a much, much shorter entry. Even though it's popular, I find Gamers Against Weed (the concept of "factions" in general) to be really cringe.
The Foundation looking like a regular corporation changing their logo for pride month didn't help, but that was on the admins. Thankfully they walked this back recentlyish, and now that's kept to the front page and not individual entries.
> Minecraft
I've probably played almost 1000 hours of this game, so I don't exactly hate it, I'm tired of it (I couldn't tell you the last time I opened it, probably 2014 or so? whenever 1.7/1.8 were active). Mojang is not helping. The issue lies with Jens Bergensten and his design philosophy of "not changing the game too much", which has led to so so so many cruft tacked on to the game instead of anything that makes it fresher. I don't think this is a hot take, there are always memes around every Minecon complaining that they just added another cosmetic animal with no gameplay implications.
I want it to be more like Terraria. If it doesn't want complex combat, they can still add new areas and objectives, make the base game longer. If I have to dig down to layer 11 and optimally excavate for diamonds again I'll kill someone.
It's remarkable how closely my opinions align with yours on two of the topics expressed- although I suppose none of them are exactly unpopular opinions.
In regards to steampunk I think it's just a difference of cultural spheres, I don't think I'm as involved in various fan spheres as you so my perception is just closer to what seems to be some kind of cultural average- the Victorian period (with the inherent conflicts) with goggles and airships and cogwheels slapped on. What I'd think of as its "masterwork" would probably be The Difference Engine (whose author also wrote Neuromancer). I think that steampunk was at its height in the 2005-2015 period, so if you encounter any now it's probably just the dregs of the genre.
With the SCP foundation in particular I do find it interesting how the social perception among the more medium-level fans- the fandom- is extremely different to the perception among the people who write the vast majority of the articles on the wiki. The fandom seems to combine the more original tone of bureaucratic management with a kind of airsoft-tacticool engagement that seems far more popular and enduring than the social commentary/analysis of the more modern works. I've seen some recommendations for new authors on the site that they ensure their work has some direct applicability to real life issues which might be causing it. There's also the relatively insular nature of the wiki that probably causes a feedback effect on the article's length. https://akumeoy.neocities.org/scpvotes is an interesting analysis of the distribution of votes on the wiki, and I don't think it'd be too hard to make a graph of article length and the prevalence of certain tags as time goes on. I do think that some of the factions are useful for the setting- the various state-level-actors and perhaps some of the companies, but I share your dislike for GAW in particular. It feels absurd that a multinational bureaucracy would care about the equivalent of a local anarchist cell.
I think that modern Minecraft being unreasonably unambitious is a common criticism. I don't think this is all the developers fault (although their philosophy both from Jens and the studio in general don't help) as part of it is probably cause by a combination of community backlash around unpopular decisions like the 1.9 combat update and a desire to avoid risking what is one of the most valuable IPs in the world. That all the recent updates should be better integrated into the general mechanics is a broad and accurate sentiment- as it is they feel almost entirely self-contained, having no impact on the world outside of their own little sections. The most recent change I can think of that breaks this rule is the fox, added in 2018, which hunts nearby chickens. I think part of the reason that Mojang doesn't add new objectives, particularly post-end objectives, is that the very, very large casual playerbase can't reasonably engage with them. On Xbox 14% of players have killed the dragon and 9% have killed the wither.
Also, thanks in particular for the Carrot Kingdom and the fake reddit thread recommendations, I thought they were great.
Nice! Golden Idol. One day you'll have enough stars to have a games-only shill list. I've only played the base game, I had false starts on the DLC and the sequel and never got around to completing them. I did see somewhere online that they wanted to call this murder mystery genre (look at static scenes of people dying, and figure out exactly what happened) a Tableau Mortant, a take on _tableau vivant_, which is a French still life of people.
Also. Lol. I remember recommending the green text fic and you asked me no questions, but I realise it's a bit.
The fic does in fact go back to the green text format and the conventional prose sections are brief interludes, but whatever, I'm not going to argue you into enjoying it if it didn't grab you.
I agree that The Left Hand of Darkness has aged pretty badly. My assumption has always been that the Gender Stuff was a lot more interesting in the 60s - I agree that these days it comes off as pretty sexist. I do think LeGuin can and has done much better elsewhere: for example, https://shortstoryproject.com/stories/coming-of-age-in-karhide/ seems to have much more developed thoughts about a non-gendered society, and is also just very charming. https://www.sfsfss.com/stories2/Le%20Guin,%20Ursula%20K.%20-%20The%20Matter%20of%20Seggri.html is aggressively gendered but in a bizarre and fucked up way that is very different to the bizarre and fucked up way Earth does gender: what I like about LeGuin at her best is her ability to sit with contradiction and refuse to let anything be easy.
(I went back and flipped through her short story collection The Birthday of the World to write this and honestly it has some of my favourite short stories ever - can't see Paradises Lost online but it's definitely worth reading too, though not about gender at all, just about people being people and generation ships and flawed utopias, which is something she comes back to again and again.)
When I go back to LeGuin it'll be through Earthsea, seems like the biggest uncontroversially beloved thing she's done besides Omelas (which I read but I guess didn't count in the article). I'm all gendered out for now.
I'm interested in joining the Unc Book Club, seems like a good excuse to actually sit down and read Borges. Now that you've ended up a full RE fan, does that mean we might see other big series from that era like Silent Hill eventually?
I would like to lurk in the Discord book club, please. Your posts have been my window into webfic slop, which I find anthropologically interesting, but don't have the time to consume. And I'm a literature enjoyer. I am also the exact person who read essays on The Left Hand of Darkness's feminism, rather than the actual book. I'm real glad you cleared a couple points about it up for me.
Armored Core might be like the only mecha franchise which genuinely is more about the mechs than the characters. Broadly each numbered entry reboots the series and then continues on for a few spinoffs before the next numbered entry, though AC6 did a lot to bring a coherent narrative to the games. AC4 and especially the expansion 4A also did this, but those are really the only three games who have a coherent plot. And even then 4 is stretching it.
> What I probably won’t play is the DLC for this game (Golden Idol), because I hear the final one is terrible, and it’s part of a shared storyline…
I strongly recommend playing Rise of the Golden Idol (the direct sequel), it's polished and well-made. The two DLCs of the first game are good but flawed, and the four DLCs of the second game are all better (slightly less flawed). The "shared storyline" part is correct but misleading -- they're always only barely related to previous games, making references here and there and adding to the same Weird worldbuilding, but (IIRC) never require the player to actually remember events of other games. The equivalent of an after-credits Marvel scene.
No, what I meant is that the DLCs for the first game are part one and two of the same story, though that could be wrong too, I could have misread the reviews.
I actually didn't know there was a sequel, maybe I heard of it but mixed it up with the DLCs. I don't know, reviews are mixed. I'll wishlist and see if it gets a big sale eventually.
I stumbled upon a Mass Effect/Halo crossover recently. Despite knowing fuck all about Halo (except the protagonist's name, John Halo), and the author's occasional spelling mistakes/using the wrong words it's been an enjoyable read so far. I haven't gotten to the end yet but it seems like a finished story, too. https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/united-we-stand-halo-mass-effect-crossover.736864/
I was wrong, the story was abandoned in 2021, the last chapter title just made it seem like an ending when I looked at the threadmarks. Still, it was pretty good while it lasted, even got me with some twists I wasn't expecting, though that could be due to my lack of Halo knowledge.
Cool to see you mention Golden Idol since I coincidentally played both games this month too! (you didn't mention the second game though?) Regarding DLC, I also don't think they stood out as much as the base game, but I don't think they're a bad time. They don't retroactively ruin the main storyline or anything like a lot of prequel content is wont to do, they're just a bit lower quality in comparison.
Sad that you couldn't get into Obra Dinn, i remember there were some accessibility options you could try, or maybe the high resolution mod which seems to reduce the effect.
Ohh, I didn't know that mod existed, thank you. Will re-add to my backlog.
Broke down and made an account to finally comment on your posts. It's cool to see someone put so much time into reviewing a side of the internet I really care about.
Glad to see you enjoyed the RE series. It's a classic for a reason, and RE4 has a huge influence on the industry for better and worse. May I recommend its sibling series: Silent Hill? The first three are easy recommends, with a tentative recommendation for the fourth and the recently released "f" if you want more. Ideally, emulate the first three and use "Silent Hill 2 Enhanced Edition" which is a fan made patch for the second one, but the remake is good enough if you don't want the hassle of patching the PC port (which is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain legally).
It's a shame to see so many authors online (especially fanfic authors) using AI to create stuff. I assumed that a community writing stories about stuff they're passionate for would do it purely for "the love of the game," but I guess I misjudged the SB/SV crowd. I tend to drop AI written stories even if I don't figure out they're made that way because they lack a certain "sauce" more amateur but authentic stories do. Or maybe I'm just subconsciously noticing it? Raw output cannot compensate for a meandering story that doesn't go anywhere.
Your note about Gundam/Evangelion was pretty funny because it's a bit of a meme in the mecha community to describe a new series with "This one isn't just about giant robots, but mental trauma and the horrors of war!" as if the foundational material wasn't built on those themes.
Thanks for posting. I eagerly await the first of every month to read your posts.
“Don’t let me gush over this too much” … I think you may have forgotten to gush? I’m hearing “MC is neurotic and manipulative” and “feels like it was written by a Sociology student” as the two concrete things that are good about this, which, uh, is perhaps a little faint as praise goes? Anyway I’m not doubting it’s good, and “the next Worm” is a good selling point for me, more just curious about your recommendation given that the most of the review seems to be reasons NOT to read it
You've got a point, I'll elaborate later (edit: did it).
I was going to suggest the Gotham Goon Gacha fic, so was pleasantly surprised to see that you got to it already, lmao. The Techno Queen comparison is apt, I haven't thought about that fic in years, which is honestly pretty unsurprising.
Hello. I stumbled across your blog a little while ago, and I found some of your recommendations to be fairly good. I enjoyed Chasing Sunlight and The Northern Caves.
I've seen you mention steampunk, minecraft and the SCP foundation- although perhaps only it's modern form- derisively. I'd be interested in hearing an elaboration of your thoughts on these topics. I'm not going to try and debate you into caring or something insufferable like that, I'm just genuinely curious as to your reasoning.
One other thing that I'm interested in is that your review of Lord of the Mysteries shows up as your top post, despite far lower likes and comments. Is this accurate, and if so do you know why? I personally tried to get into the series previously but the awful prose ground me to a halt.
Thanks for the recommendations and regular reviews of the many peculiarities of a niche fiction format.
Great comment!
> your review of Lord of the Mysteries shows up as your top post, despite far lower likes and comments. Is this accurate, and if so do you know why?
I also don't know for sure, but I suspect it's based on views, and it's because at least when I posted it it was the biggest English review of the book. When you googled "lord of the mysteries review" it was the first result. It's pretty high still.
Speaking of, it just got a new English translation thanks to the popular anime, so you can read that if the old one defeated you. I haven't read it, but I hear it's much better. The only issues are that it's physically published and hard if not impossible to find elsewhere, and that it's not complete yet.
> I'd be interested in hearing an elaboration of your thoughts on
> Steampunk
Dunno, it's an aesthetic masquerading as a genre, and this leads to lower quality fiction being produced based on it, because there's nothing to grab onto (for example, with Fantasy you have obvious hooks like prophecies, royal lines, races in conflict with each other, etc).
Its fans also tend to be annoying, they're close in culturespace to m'lady fedora types. Pop culture example here: https://youtu.be/uPyK3SJ3yCc?t=253
I think the "greatest steampunk work" often pointed to is Girl Genius, and that's infamous for a very very slow update rate combined with negative plot progression, so it's not getting any help from masterpieces. Rational fiction also has annoying fans, but it brings something to the table.
> The SCP foundation
Nah, I love SCP. I dislike *modern* SCP. It's just slowly worsened over the years, with a combination of rehashes and extremely long articles that should have just been optional logs linked from a much, much shorter entry. Even though it's popular, I find Gamers Against Weed (the concept of "factions" in general) to be really cringe.
The Foundation looking like a regular corporation changing their logo for pride month didn't help, but that was on the admins. Thankfully they walked this back recentlyish, and now that's kept to the front page and not individual entries.
> Minecraft
I've probably played almost 1000 hours of this game, so I don't exactly hate it, I'm tired of it (I couldn't tell you the last time I opened it, probably 2014 or so? whenever 1.7/1.8 were active). Mojang is not helping. The issue lies with Jens Bergensten and his design philosophy of "not changing the game too much", which has led to so so so many cruft tacked on to the game instead of anything that makes it fresher. I don't think this is a hot take, there are always memes around every Minecon complaining that they just added another cosmetic animal with no gameplay implications.
I want it to be more like Terraria. If it doesn't want complex combat, they can still add new areas and objectives, make the base game longer. If I have to dig down to layer 11 and optimally excavate for diamonds again I'll kill someone.
It's remarkable how closely my opinions align with yours on two of the topics expressed- although I suppose none of them are exactly unpopular opinions.
In regards to steampunk I think it's just a difference of cultural spheres, I don't think I'm as involved in various fan spheres as you so my perception is just closer to what seems to be some kind of cultural average- the Victorian period (with the inherent conflicts) with goggles and airships and cogwheels slapped on. What I'd think of as its "masterwork" would probably be The Difference Engine (whose author also wrote Neuromancer). I think that steampunk was at its height in the 2005-2015 period, so if you encounter any now it's probably just the dregs of the genre.
With the SCP foundation in particular I do find it interesting how the social perception among the more medium-level fans- the fandom- is extremely different to the perception among the people who write the vast majority of the articles on the wiki. The fandom seems to combine the more original tone of bureaucratic management with a kind of airsoft-tacticool engagement that seems far more popular and enduring than the social commentary/analysis of the more modern works. I've seen some recommendations for new authors on the site that they ensure their work has some direct applicability to real life issues which might be causing it. There's also the relatively insular nature of the wiki that probably causes a feedback effect on the article's length. https://akumeoy.neocities.org/scpvotes is an interesting analysis of the distribution of votes on the wiki, and I don't think it'd be too hard to make a graph of article length and the prevalence of certain tags as time goes on. I do think that some of the factions are useful for the setting- the various state-level-actors and perhaps some of the companies, but I share your dislike for GAW in particular. It feels absurd that a multinational bureaucracy would care about the equivalent of a local anarchist cell.
I think that modern Minecraft being unreasonably unambitious is a common criticism. I don't think this is all the developers fault (although their philosophy both from Jens and the studio in general don't help) as part of it is probably cause by a combination of community backlash around unpopular decisions like the 1.9 combat update and a desire to avoid risking what is one of the most valuable IPs in the world. That all the recent updates should be better integrated into the general mechanics is a broad and accurate sentiment- as it is they feel almost entirely self-contained, having no impact on the world outside of their own little sections. The most recent change I can think of that breaks this rule is the fox, added in 2018, which hunts nearby chickens. I think part of the reason that Mojang doesn't add new objectives, particularly post-end objectives, is that the very, very large casual playerbase can't reasonably engage with them. On Xbox 14% of players have killed the dragon and 9% have killed the wither.
Also, thanks in particular for the Carrot Kingdom and the fake reddit thread recommendations, I thought they were great.
Nice! Golden Idol. One day you'll have enough stars to have a games-only shill list. I've only played the base game, I had false starts on the DLC and the sequel and never got around to completing them. I did see somewhere online that they wanted to call this murder mystery genre (look at static scenes of people dying, and figure out exactly what happened) a Tableau Mortant, a take on _tableau vivant_, which is a French still life of people.
Also. Lol. I remember recommending the green text fic and you asked me no questions, but I realise it's a bit.
The fic does in fact go back to the green text format and the conventional prose sections are brief interludes, but whatever, I'm not going to argue you into enjoying it if it didn't grab you.
I agree that The Left Hand of Darkness has aged pretty badly. My assumption has always been that the Gender Stuff was a lot more interesting in the 60s - I agree that these days it comes off as pretty sexist. I do think LeGuin can and has done much better elsewhere: for example, https://shortstoryproject.com/stories/coming-of-age-in-karhide/ seems to have much more developed thoughts about a non-gendered society, and is also just very charming. https://www.sfsfss.com/stories2/Le%20Guin,%20Ursula%20K.%20-%20The%20Matter%20of%20Seggri.html is aggressively gendered but in a bizarre and fucked up way that is very different to the bizarre and fucked up way Earth does gender: what I like about LeGuin at her best is her ability to sit with contradiction and refuse to let anything be easy.
(I went back and flipped through her short story collection The Birthday of the World to write this and honestly it has some of my favourite short stories ever - can't see Paradises Lost online but it's definitely worth reading too, though not about gender at all, just about people being people and generation ships and flawed utopias, which is something she comes back to again and again.)
When I go back to LeGuin it'll be through Earthsea, seems like the biggest uncontroversially beloved thing she's done besides Omelas (which I read but I guess didn't count in the article). I'm all gendered out for now.
I'm interested in joining the Unc Book Club, seems like a good excuse to actually sit down and read Borges. Now that you've ended up a full RE fan, does that mean we might see other big series from that era like Silent Hill eventually?
Wow, you're the second person to recommend SH, so probably. Sent you an invite.
I would like to lurk in the Discord book club, please. Your posts have been my window into webfic slop, which I find anthropologically interesting, but don't have the time to consume. And I'm a literature enjoyer. I am also the exact person who read essays on The Left Hand of Darkness's feminism, rather than the actual book. I'm real glad you cleared a couple points about it up for me.
I prefer Le Guin's short fiction; The Found and the Lost is a good collection. Looking forward to Borges!
Armored Core might be like the only mecha franchise which genuinely is more about the mechs than the characters. Broadly each numbered entry reboots the series and then continues on for a few spinoffs before the next numbered entry, though AC6 did a lot to bring a coherent narrative to the games. AC4 and especially the expansion 4A also did this, but those are really the only three games who have a coherent plot. And even then 4 is stretching it.
> What I probably won’t play is the DLC for this game (Golden Idol), because I hear the final one is terrible, and it’s part of a shared storyline…
I strongly recommend playing Rise of the Golden Idol (the direct sequel), it's polished and well-made. The two DLCs of the first game are good but flawed, and the four DLCs of the second game are all better (slightly less flawed). The "shared storyline" part is correct but misleading -- they're always only barely related to previous games, making references here and there and adding to the same Weird worldbuilding, but (IIRC) never require the player to actually remember events of other games. The equivalent of an after-credits Marvel scene.
No, what I meant is that the DLCs for the first game are part one and two of the same story, though that could be wrong too, I could have misread the reviews.
I actually didn't know there was a sequel, maybe I heard of it but mixed it up with the DLCs. I don't know, reviews are mixed. I'll wishlist and see if it gets a big sale eventually.
I stumbled upon a Mass Effect/Halo crossover recently. Despite knowing fuck all about Halo (except the protagonist's name, John Halo), and the author's occasional spelling mistakes/using the wrong words it's been an enjoyable read so far. I haven't gotten to the end yet but it seems like a finished story, too. https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/united-we-stand-halo-mass-effect-crossover.736864/
I was wrong, the story was abandoned in 2021, the last chapter title just made it seem like an ending when I looked at the threadmarks. Still, it was pretty good while it lasted, even got me with some twists I wasn't expecting, though that could be due to my lack of Halo knowledge.
I've read some of LeGuin's earthsea books as a kid, they were good but never really gripped me. Could be the translation's problem, though.