Getting crystals simply unlocks the plates throughout the demo. 100 Crystals will unlock the Silver Plates scattered in the dining room and city, and 250 Crystals will unlock the Gold Plates scattered in the dining room and city.

No kidding - the guys hosting were stuck with the most CRINGE inducing “Get hype” script ever.

Benihana at number one? Why?

Portal was 2-3 hours long and cost $20. I think $18 was a totally fair price for Firewatch.

It tastes pretty much just like cherry blossoms smell. Lightly floral and mixed with a taste similar to that of green tea. It’s definitely not for everyone.

1. Yes, there are distinct narrative arcs in the story, as well as major NPC character development. Your character is effectively a silent protagonist (insofar as they do not have a voice actor speaking lines, they do “talk” to the characters but it’s kinda up to you to fill in what they’re saying.) the beginning of…

Also on Balmung as Reinette Bardelaurain and Aerik Tirel

Daily roulette now caps you on weekly tomestones if you run it once a day for five days. Raids are still weekly lockouts. But that’s the gear treadmill of any vertical progression MMO endgame really.

The Beast Tribe quests are meant as daily ways to gain EXP for your extra classes in that level range. It breaks up the monotony of having to do dungeons over and over again.

PlayStation Plus is not required for FFXIV. Just the normal monthly sub.

Another example: when Final Fantasy XIV added the Gold Saucer minigame area, they added the FFVIII card game “Triple Triad” to it as well. Best thing is that you can challenge NPCs and other players, and they even do tournaments. And once you have Triple Triad unlocked, you can collect new cards simply by doing…

Because they tend to canonically establish certain major characters as certain genders later in the franchise?

Oh my god. This is my hometown. I've been to Pine Garden dozens of times before I moved and the owner is the nicest person ever. Holy SHIT.

I was hoping you were but sometimes tone is hard to discern on the Internet, and given the amount of “lol ethics in journalism” comments Kotaku and Jason normally see, I couldn't tell.

Dear god please tell me this comment is a joke so I don't have to start drinking vodka at 3 PM on a Thursday.

A good example of a right way to do a cash shop on a paid game/service is to look at how Final Fantasy XIV implemented theirs. They were very upfront with the fans about it and kept them in the loop on how and why it was being developed, mentioned right out that it would never be a pay-to-win store (it’s simply for…

I really had hoped that FFXIV taught them a lesson, and that they’d learned from it. But I think that it was a lesson they only chose to apply until A Realm Reborn became a commercial success of a game, and then immediately discarded all of that knowledge and went right back to what they were doing before.

I’m really bothered by that tweet for the sake of the fact that it feels like SE is falling back into the same trap that led them to having such bad Final Fantasy games in the last console generation.

Phil Fish is another good example of an indie dev who went totally nuts dealing with the raw feedback of fans and people on the internet.

I remember when Ni no Kuni did something similar with their preorders for the Wizard Edition of the game. The “Ninostarter” - where the number of preorders determined the number of additional bonuses the CE ended up getting.