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Re: The Internet Has Not Been Kind to Horizon Hunters Gathering

QiaraIris

In all seriousness, I think someone already mentioned this above and I completely agree with them.

I specifically buy my PS3/4/5 because Sony has always been strong in a single player platform. From exclusives to JRPG, PlayStation was my go to if I want to be immersed in a great single player games. These days, that has been taken over by my Switch 2. So anytime Sony and their out-of-touch executives tried to push these new Live Service titles, I automatically just tune them out.

I'm not their target market for these, and never will be.

Re: Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties (PS5) - Colossal, Confident Remake Makes Controversial Changes

QiaraIris

Interesting, as someone who played all Yakuza games from the start, Gaiden Kiryu had the weakest combat. Yes, he got speedier, but I absolutely hated how weak he feels and how spongy the enemies were. In fact, it was probably the only Yakuza game where I skipped all the mini-games so that I can just be done with the story because I hated the combat so much.

Also what is with that screenshot? what is with that colour palette? Honestly, this is probably the first Yakuza game that I'll wait instead of getting it D1. This remake is just not vibing with me.

Re: Dynasty Warriors 3 Remake Hit with Indefinite Delay Just Two Months from PS5 Release

QiaraIris

@Nem What? it's not. Remake is a remake from the ground up like Trails in the Sky, remastered is just an enhanced graphic to make it up to the standard of modern consoles like all iterations of The Last Of Us.

If it's just an enhanced graphic with a few additional stages, that's a remaster.
If it's a completely new work with a new engine from scratches even if it's the same gameplay, that's a remake.

It's not that complicated.

Re: Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined Demo Out on PS5 This Week, Opening Movie Is a Masterclass

QiaraIris

This is a fantastic news!

The first three months of 2026 is absolute stacked with gaming releases, that the JRPG girl in me is really, really happy about it. 🥰

Trails Beyond The Horizon - Jan 15
Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined - Feb 5th
Yakuza Kiwami 3 - Feb 12th
Monster Hunter Stories 3 - March 13th

And we still don't even have any news on my biggest hype release yet, Fire Emblem: Fortune Weave.

This is going to be a good year for gaming. I'm so ridiculously ecstatic with this lineups that I can feel myself glowing.

Re: More Digimon Games Incoming as Time Stranger's Success Sees Dev Team Expand

QiaraIris

Time Stranger was the best Digimon Stories and JRPG of the franchise. One thing that was missed from the interview was Ryosuke Hara confirming that the "Adult topics" works for Time Stranger, and they hoped to continue that. For me, that's a great news as Time Stranger deals a lot of uncomfortable and more mature subject matters like suicide and depression. If they continue this, they don't need to compete directly with Pokemon and can tap a more mature audience with their strong storylines.

Re: 40+ PS5 Games to Play in 2026

QiaraIris

Lol...really? 3 gacha games and Trails Beyond The Horizon, Sky 2nd Chapter, Grand Bazaar, and Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma (arguably the return of Marvelous farming sims into PlayStation) is not in this list? The more appropriate title for this article would be "MY personal choice of 40+ PS5 Games to Play in 2026".

Re: 'It Has the Power to Enrich the Creative World': Level-5 Boss All-In on Generative AI

QiaraIris

He's not wrong, generative AI can and does shorten development cycle.

And as with how this technology evolves, the question will shift from whether or not to use it, to how to ethically use it (for example, 81Produce talent agency that made news lately in Seiyuu's market by partnering with AI company to store their talents voice (with their talents consent and profit sharing) and used as AI seiyuu. This works because it gets the talents' consent as well as still giving them income eventhough AI used their voices.

One of the games I'm really looking forward to next year is Starsand Island and the developers have been pretty open about using Generative AI.

I'm still looking forward to play it.

Re: 'No Need to Be Embarrassed About It': Zenless Zone Zero Staff Say 'It's Painfully Obvious' They're Working Tons of Overtime

QiaraIris

I think people are just tired of reading these type of articles because it just evolved into an empty platitude or virtue signaling.

And yes, as someone has mentioned, compared to other labourers or even anime artists that literally worked grueling hours with marginal pay, these game developers had it easier. So watching them still whining about it just grating to be honest.

Re: 'No Need to Be Embarrassed About It': Zenless Zone Zero Staff Say 'It's Painfully Obvious' They're Working Tons of Overtime

QiaraIris

If you actually want to publish news like these, can you deep dive more on it? Yes, overtime has existed forever, I'm in IT and when we have an MIO, it's not surprising to work over 16+ hours to get it fixed. Or when we're trying to push new things into production without breaking the system.

But we get paid extra for it. Overtime here is 250% regular pay, so that's a lot of money when you have to Overtime.

So let's do deep dive, how much are they getting paid? is mandatory OT or crunch or whatever you wanna call it means they work unpaid? is it as bad as the anime industries? were they blindsided? was this not outlined in their employment contract that they signed? Without extra details, this is nothing more than tabloid level gossip.

This kind of news is fine, but let's stop fearmongering without getting into the details of things. News outlets are pushing fear articles with AI and crunch, and then have the audacity only reporting half of it. If the idea was to garner sympathy for these folks, well, it failed. Especially for companies like Hoyoverse who made hundreds of billions with their gacha and last time I checked, somehow still have the lowest turnover rate and lowest termination rate (which means they somehow treat their employees well with their pay structure and bonuses) in the industry.

Re: Western Sales Have Saved the Trails Series, Falcom Boss Suggests

QiaraIris

As someone who lives during the era where Trails fandom was absolutely not sure whether or not we're ever getting a continuation to Cold Steel after the second one, this actually made me tear up.

I'm happy they decided to focus more on global release so we don't have to wait 5 years to catch up to the next series, and I'll be more than happy to buy all Falcom games to support their decision to do this.

Re: Octopath Traveler 0 (PS5) - Perfectly Fine JRPG Action

QiaraIris

This is a respectable score and while IGN doesn't have their final score yet (still playing the game), the vibe was also more positive there.
As someone who like OT1 and absolutely loves OT2, the demo for OT0 was probably the first time I actually groaned in disappointment when the 3 hours notice flashed on my screen. I really enjoyed what OT0 offers, as it reminds me of my all-time favourite JRPG franchise, Suikoden. Yes, it's not obviously as massive as that as we're not recruiting 108 characters and rebuilding an entire kingdom, but the vibe and the theme are pretty similar from what I gathered in the demo. The recruiting, the side missions, the rebuilding, I enjoyed them all and I can't wait to actually play them tomorrow.

That being said, OT0 is a great blueprint, and I hope Square will consider creating a proper recruiting/townbuilding JRPG again from scratch. Maybe Octopath Traveller 0-2, or OT3.

Re: Bloodlines 2 Publisher Accepts the Blame Over $37 Million Failure

QiaraIris

Anyone in the comments thinking the $37million write off was a big disaster for Paradox, clearly has no idea what this publisher has in their portfolio. Age of Wonder, Europa Universalis, and Crusader Kings franchises alone are more than enough to offset this cost as their millions of loyal players are more than happy to pay for their overpriced DLCs and expansion packs as they usually give us thousands of hours of games, yes me included.

They'll be fine; in fact, I'll argue that the major success of their other franchises that they are strong at, is the reason why they can occasionally take risks like publishing this game.