Mentok! The MIND-TAKER!

It does, but to be fair, another player tipping off powerful NPC bounty hunters is the best-case scenario. It seems equally likely that somebody 30 levels higher than you might go on a random killing spree that you fall victim to. That's less of a "you need to be secretive!" moment and more of a "welp, assholes" one.

Worse than boring, I'm afraid. We're "more severe and less joyous—utilitarian instead of approachable."

At least in Saints Row, my habit was to mash the "Randomize" button a bunch of times for each feature until I landed on something human looking. Much easier that adjusting 10 different sliders related to your character's exact nostril location.

What I'm most confused is, why do party members have their own inventories to begin with? Good UI design goes a long way, but RPGs (mostly jRPGs, but still) have used shared inventories for decades. It's much easier to manage, and all you lose is meticulous encumbrance tracking. Which, um, boo hoo?

Massive Chalice took an interesting tack with this. Backers got to create all of the bloodlines in the game (house names, mottos, founders, & emblems), and there's no in-game creation tool specifically to ensure that backer families actually get used. But the dev team also did a pass to sort submissions into Thematic…

For a long time, I figured that it was a black woman and a white woman in a duo. The name makes no damn sense for 3 black women.

Do they have Jason Concepcion on that? Me and podcasts don't get along, but I've really enjoyed his Ask The Maester column as well as his adventures in learning Dothraki.

There aren't a whole lot of genres I write off entirely, and even fewer that have a personal favorite in them. But thanks to @Carlton_Hungus for jogging my memory; I'll go with fighting games and my eternal love, Smash Bros Melee.

Morrigan Aensland of Darkstalkers fame, I think.

Like Pagan mentioned, Lulu is much more directed in her crankiness than Morrigan. Partly because of her specific romantic backstory (she's the widow to Wakka's brother, which I guess makes those mourning clothes?) and partly because her companions aren't always the sharpest crayons in the box. On the latter front,…

Also, a notorious vase pee-er.

What's everyone's favorite name for the space beneath levels you get trapped in after glitching out? I was always fond of THE NEGA-ZONE (caps required), but some friends have turned me on to calling it The Demilitarized Zone. The latter makes no sense but is oddly charming to me.

That DBZ game is so hilariously on-point. Its story is literally "Your self-insertion fan-fiction is now canon." Clearly the devs know where their bread is buttered.

Yeah, the characters are all either 1-dimensional and annoying, or blank slates. Kazuki's always yelling, Ryogo's always creeping, Emma's barely there, Dennis is barely there and casually racist when he does show up, Yun's always petulant… It's a terrible cast, a terrible story, and words words so many words! I just…

First time, or deliberately going back to it?

Front Mission 3 lumbers on in mech-ly glory! Continuing its theme of “It’s fun, but nothing works how it should,” the more familiar you get with the systems, the more apparent it is that you should create boring mechs that lean heavily on early-game parts, not end-game ones. It’s a beautiful game as viewed through a…

Didn't the ending show a couple of Red pups around the crater, though? Either I'm misremembering, he reproduces via mitosis, or Hojo was crazy like a fox.

It's like they realized that Laguna & company were more interesting than the main cast of FF8, and their solution was to cut out the ability to play as the cooler party. :(

I was gonna say, I saw the headline and thought we were going to get a complete rundown of the primary protagonist in each of the games! Come on Nick, all we wanted was literally fifteen times as much work. Is that so much to ask?