If nothing else, running on the treadmill is MUCH easier on my shoes, which I imagine translates to being easier on my feet and knees.  My shoes after a year of running on pavement were worn all over the place on the soles, where as with running on the treadmill after a year, the soles look near perfect, but instead…

On the treadmill comment: I find that I am capable of running much faster when running on a treadmill, mainly because the machine is dictating my speed for me versus me subconsciously adapting my pace as happens when I run outside. I currently run 4.25 miles each morning, every day, with the first 3 miles at a 6…

Seeing that image, I just reflexively shuddered and had a wave of nausea.

Yeah, I thought it was just a knockoff of Milk Bar’s cereal milk ice cream based on the description in the article.  The linked video makes it clear that the machine is just pulverizing whatever you add to the ice cream and then mixing it together.  So in reality it’s just a souped-up Concrete or Blizzard that can be…

Nia and Morag are certainly the two standouts. Pyra/Mythra’s VA is good, but the line reading has some weird pauses at times. Rex’s English VA was actually pretty decent for most of his performance that I’ve seen, but there are a couple scenes that just really don’t work well (the end of Chapter 7 and the final boss…

The gacha system was trying at times. KOS-MOS was the third or second to last Blade I pulled (Agate was my last of the base game; I got T-elos and all the Torna Blades fairly quickly in NG+, within 99 rare cores and about 45 legendary cores), so I certainly shared in everyones’ frustrations.  I didn’t do anything…

Agreed.  Once you can get Full Bursts reliably, the combat system is one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever encountered in a JRPG.

I played primarily with the Japanese voice acting, but am aware and can really appreciate the care and direction the localizers took for the English voice overs. I think the English VO was unfairly maligned in some of the reviews, but can also recognize that some of the performances were a bit wonky.  Both voice overs…

Yes, the game drags HEAVILY until chapter 5 or so, which depending on how quickly you rush through chapters 1-4, can take a couple dozen hours.  Once you unlock the 4th and 5th party members, the game opens up immensely.

I’ve logged over 350 hours in XC2; I guess I’m one of those people that enjoyed the Blade and combat system from the base game. While it was tedious at times to unlock all of the rare Blades, I enjoyed my time with the game overall. XC2 is by far my favorite game on the Switch so far.  Once you know what you are doing…

The subreddit says it can be beaten in 12 hours.  There’s the same NG+ system from XC2 after you beat it, and the additional hard mode difficulties unlock as well.  There’s apparently a bit of gating through the Community system that accounts for some of the padding.

I would play a mainline AC game with the Alessandra character as the protagonist, knowing nothing else about the character other than the art design above.  She wasn’t in the Ezio trilogy, was she?

Is this still a thing that causes outrage?  I’ve had an iPhone X since it was released last November.  It’s a non-issue in my day to day use of the phone.  Who cares?

Counterpoint:  learn the densities of various liquids and then convert from liquid to mass measures and use a scale.  You’ll never have to use liquid or dry measuring cups again, outside of teaspoon-sized quantities (or you could bypass even those with a more precise scale).  I haven’t measured corn syrup by volume in…

Torna is a stand-alone game that takes place five centuries before XC2. As far as I know you could play it without having purchased XC2 as long as you buy the physical release (the digital release being tied into the expansion pass makes playing the digital version without owning XC2 a bit unclear; allegedly the two…

Torna releases on the 14th if you have the expansion pass.

The D.C. Metros:  “We give new meaning to the phrase ‘I’m on fire!’”

Doubtful. SHD had enough trouble communicating in Mandarin with a handful of Korean speakers. Doubtful they’re going to add a third language into the mix, unless he already speaks Mandarin.

Right. Was more curious if he had any thoughts on what other outlets were saying, in the frame of his own thoughts and review. 

Tim, I appreciated your 7000 word review. I was curious if you’ve read any of the other reviews of DQ XI on other sites (like Polygon and Ars Technica) and how those writers’ opinions compare against your own? Most of the other written reviews I’ve seen can be summed up as “it’s certainly a Dragon Quest game” while…