I’ve seen all those of except Corner, and any one of them would have made an acceptable nominee (except maybe Napping Princess, whose plot was a gigantic mess). Even SAO turned out shockingly good.

We’re still taking nominations for the Revue Club, the A.V. Games unofficial book club for video games, for the next few hours. Get them in at this link.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has its hooks deep in me now. I know it’s been out for three months and everyone else has finally moved on, but it took me a while to get into a good groove, and now that I’m taking the time to mop up sidequests, I’m feeling the pull back towards the main plot. You don’t really get a sense for…

Your description of the Yakuza 6 demo has me pumped. I’m watching the cutscenes of 2 through 5 right now in preparation for when 6 comes out in April. Already I’m finding 2's plot more compelling than 1's, which bodes well for future games.

If I had to guess, it’s because production committees in Japan are greenlighting a lot of slice-of-life these days, so when the opportunity for a little more creative freedom comes around, the contracted studios are eager to do something different.

Netflix has been good about dubbing the anime it licences exclusively so far, so I imagine that trend will continue.

Re: Point #3 - Animation is usually completed before voiceover in anime (the opposite of what’s done in the Western animation industry) so Japanese seiyuu usually need to match mouth flaps too. In some cases, they record to a rough animatic instead, and they’re given a little more liberty. Either way, they rarely get…

Nah, that’s just around 73% of it.

DRM requiring a persistent online connection even for single-player too. It’s a trash fire.

Still one of the best punk records of the past decade, IMO, and it’s great to get some more insight about it.

I just want to play through a classic Ghibli film in my underwear, the detritus of month-old Doritos littering my hairy stomach. Is that too much to ask?

I always enjoy Amanita’s aesthetic sensibilities, but I don’t feel that they’ve yet found a way to marry them to sensible puzzle design. Hopefully Chuchel changes that.

I’m super-happy that this game exists. It’s so bonkers that I can’t believe it got greenlit. Here’s hoping for an eventual Switch port. (I don’t own a 3DS.)

There’s a lot that I like about what I’m seeing of Ni no Kuni II, but the top-down chibi sections have me spooked. I don’t want Level-5's take on Pikmin.

Seriously, it’s been a godsend that the release faucet has been slowed down to a drip. I finally have some time to dig into Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory is begging me to make some progress as well.

This parody Tumblr can provide you with some good ol’ Pokemon noir:

XC2 is actually pretty fun to play, if a little frustrating at times.

Since we don’t seem to have a Keyboard Geniuses this week, here’s where I remind you to:

Merve thinks Kylepon speak lies!

I’ve been dipping back into Xenoblade Chronicles 2 after putting it on hiatus to complete Yakuza Kiwami. I still haven’t fully grasped the best way to deploy my Healing Arts in battle, and the party AI can occasionally be a bit too braindead to exploit combo opportunities. Over 60 hours in, I’m not sure I really have…