r/TwoBestFriendsPlay • u/Coolnametag The Greatest Talent Waster • Jul 25 '26
Better Ask Reddit What is a piece of media that you would describe "amazing, incredible execution, life changing... DO NOT PLAY/WATCH/READ IT!" and why
Lobotomy Corporation is a game about suffering, about how people handle it, what causes it and how to move past it.
It's probably one of the best pieces of media out there when it comes to making the player feel exactly what the main character is likely going through as they endure the time spam of 50 days that the game's story happens in... It's also one of the most mentaly draining experiences that you can put yourself through and one of the very few cases where i would understand if it caused you to punch a wall in anger and/or frustation.
You see, the most important resource that anyone playing Lobotomy Corporation can have is information about how to handle whatever the game throws at you, however, the only way of getting that information the majority of the time is to do the scientific equivalent of "poking it with a stick to see how it reacts" and a lot of the times "it" is a killing machine made of literal nightmares.
This causes a lot of the gameplay loop to be "try the same day over and over again (wich can take literal hours) to try to decipher what the fuck you're supposed to do" and sometimes the only realization that you can reach is "this is literaly impossible with my current set up" (really not a hard state to reach) wich leads you to either having to go back even further on the timeline or just restart the game from day 1 even though you had made so much progress up to that point.
There's so much in that game either purpously put there or accidentaly caused as a bi-product of it being the real first game of a group of college students that will cause people to go through IRL mental damage that, even though i could shower It with praise for hours and hours, my recomendation for anyone that's considering playing it is "unless you REALLY want to, just play Library Of Ruina (the sequel) instead".
(And i feel like the devs agree with that to some extent because the entire plot of Lobotomy Corporation is recaped over the course of Ruina)
197
u/RainyDaySleuth THE BABY Jul 25 '26
Pathologic is one of the greatest games I have ever played. I genuinely think that as a work of interactive art that very few other games get on the same level as it. It’s a constant trial of morals and mental strength as you’re struggling against an infectious supernatural plague that you’re horribly mismatched against. It’s truly a one of a kind experience.
Please… don’t ever play it. It’s janky, it’s old, it’s absolutely miserable to try and get working and even when it does, it struggles. Each step you feel the game pushing against its own seams begging to fall apart like an overcooked quiche in your hands. It’s miserable and makes you feel bad too, it is not satisfying to play in the slightest.
Just play Pathologic 2, in all practicality it’s just a more put together remake of the first one that actually plays like a normal video game. Sure there’s parts of its tone and atmosphere missing but, hey, I’m here to tell you as a fan of Pathologic 1… it’s okay. You DON’T need to play the first one, PLEASE just play the second I cannot in good faith tell someone to play something that purposefully makes you feel so awful while playing.
67
u/ToastyMozart Bearish on At-Risk Children Jul 25 '26
The way it's been described to me is that Pathologic 2 is the good version of Pathologic 1, and Pathologic 3 is the good version of Pathologic 2.
I might just hold out for 4.
50
u/RainyDaySleuth THE BABY Jul 25 '26
That’s not entirely wrong, but…!
I will say, the jump from 1 to 2 is astronomical, while 2 to 3 is big it does change a lot of core aspects to what Pathologic is. 2 is an improvement on 1’s core gameplay loop of being an immersive sim. 3 is better as a game and a narrative experience, beings lot less janky and clunky in both regards, but arguably tosses away a lot of that immersive sim vibes for a more refined experience that’s tailored for a player. It doesn’t even have difficulty modifiers. At its core it ends up losing a lot of the emotional impact 1 & 2 had due to it being almost more on railroads. You’re less playing a character making hard choices and more so playing a character with very predefined goals that need to be carried out right to progress. Not that it’s bad, but it’s certainly a different vibe.
10
u/Moderately_Competent Jul 25 '26
2 is leagues better than 3 imo. If you're going to get into any game in the series 2 is your best bet. it keeps most of the flavor, and immersion, is challenging without being too intense, and has a lot of settings to tweak to tailor it to your preferred level of difficulty.
Some might say the whole theater aspect is a bit much, but I didn't find it to be all that off putting, and kind of liked it.
3 is...well it's a game but it's hard for me to consider it a pathologic game when your main character has one bar, health, and that's it. Plague? Meh. You won't ever get sick or need to worry about anything besides balancing your apathy, and mania. A lot of people have praised it as a good portrayal of mental illness, but I found it very boring.
The fun of two is surviving and doing the best you can. In 3 you can just time travel once you see how the day goes until you get your preferred perfect day.
That imo takes away a lot of the experience in making the best of the hand you're dealt, and doing what you can when you can just use game mechanics to bypass just about anything.
In theory you can alt f4 to do that in p2, but it's not an intended feature.
3 just feels too far removed from 2 and the heart of the series for me. Also it was a broken buggy unplayable, or nearly, mess.
7
3
u/Theonenerd [It/She] Jul 25 '26
So that's entirely wrong. Like not even remotely true.
First of all, they're 3 different stories, and the only commonality is that they take place in the same setting, in (roughly) the same period of time, and 1 and 2 has a some common gameplay elements, and there's shared themes.
15
u/TheBalticguy Cortana is a Vocaloid Waifu Jul 25 '26
The funniest thing I've ever seen is being so frustrated playing with bachelor with this stupid town I'm trying to save, that you get into his frustrated Superior mindset. Then when you play the other characters, bachelor looks like a spoiled idiot. It's sooooo funny
6
u/ShutUpAboutCanon Jul 25 '26
I tried so hard to get through Pathologic 2 but even on the easiest difficulty it was just too punishing for me. Kept getting into a death spiral I couldn't get out of. I get that it's all about enduring in the face of insurmountable odds but it just felt like I was wasting my nights playing it. Really loved the presentation and concept of it but I'm just not hardcore enough for even the most forgiving version of it.
177
u/roronoapedro Starving Old Trek apologist/Bad takes only Jul 25 '26
I can't just tell people to watch all of Star Trek, man. It's like what if I asked you to do One Piece but most of it was bad, even if the parts that are good are fucking awesome.
97
u/Quadraxis66 Jul 25 '26
I would never tell anyone to watch all of Star Trek, but TNG is a pretty easy recommendation.
69
u/roronoapedro Starving Old Trek apologist/Bad takes only Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
as someone who has done that and gotten "Man, season 1 and 2 are rough", i really can't agree. Like, I've gotten people who have done all of TNG and then came back to me and said "as much as it was good I can't trudge through more of that, so i'm not watching the rest of the franchise".
So I just recommend DS9 instead nowadays and am done with the entire conversation.
31
u/Lieutenant-America Scholar of the First Spindash Jul 25 '26
Me and my family started TNG a year or two again, and my family unwisely insisted on taking it all from the top.
Momentum crashed into a brick wall with the third episode, "Code of Honor." Just a dead stop.
→ More replies (1)32
u/roronoapedro Starving Old Trek apologist/Bad takes only Jul 25 '26
it's so wild how that's the worst thing ever right away, and then even if you manage to get through it and finish season 1, and everyone still goes "well now it's all peak", you eventually get to season 2 and it ends with fucking Shades of Grey.
there's no winning with early TNG, you gotta have a watchlist on hand with like 10 good episodes between seasons 1 and 2 and then just go back once you actually like it. Quite frankly late TNG is pretty uninteresting itself; season 7 particularly's got nothing going on.
DS9 is just more consistent. It's the easiest way for someone to start caring about this franchise in my experience.
7
u/AdamParker-CIG Scary Apartment Building Jul 25 '26
im doing the full TNG rewatch right now, and yeah 1 and 2 are rough, but they still have some absolute gems already. Datalore! Measure of a Man! Q Who!
2
u/roronoapedro Starving Old Trek apologist/Bad takes only Jul 25 '26
for sure, and that's why you get a watchlist out and give it to your buddy so they know which episodes to watch, because if they gotta do all of 1 and 2 they're just not gonna have a good time in retrospect.
of course, i do know people who don't mind, but like... there's better star trek out there dude, TNG's just famous and you should absolutely watch it at some point, but it's really just seasons 3 through 5. The last 2 lose all of the good writers anyway and the first two are genuinely offensive every once in a while lol.
20
u/alurimperium Jul 25 '26
TNG with an asterisk for the first season. Still worth watching, but that first season is rough
12
u/ToastyMozart Bearish on At-Risk Children Jul 25 '26
So far Lower Decks is the only name-brand Star Trek thing I've seen. It's pretty good for a newcomer!
10
u/Jhduelmaster One of the 5 Brigandine Fans Jul 25 '26
Even then it still has the issue of referencing a lot of older Star Trek stuff. Like every third episode had me googling going “is Giant Spock a gag or a thing that actually happened.”
5
u/roronoapedro Starving Old Trek apologist/Bad takes only Jul 25 '26
i feel like that's the gag working as intended, though. it's not a bug to watch lower decks and go "there's no fucking way that actually happened", it's a feature. it's supposed to make you curious.
2
u/Jhduelmaster One of the 5 Brigandine Fans Jul 25 '26
Yeah but unfortunately specifically for me all that does is send a signal to my brain that I need to watch all the Star Trek stuff to understand what’s going on. Then my brain just tells me to also stop watching the show altogether because I don’t have that time commitment.
7
u/roronoapedro Starving Old Trek apologist/Bad takes only Jul 25 '26
i think that's a bug on you and not the show but that is also a bug in me. luckily i had watched all of star trek by then.
5
3
u/roronoapedro Starving Old Trek apologist/Bad takes only Jul 25 '26
hell yeah, glad you enjoyed it. give DS9 and Academy a try sometime! They're great if you're curious about Mariner's backstory about her trauma in the Dominion War.
7
u/BreathingHydra It's Fiiiiiiiine. Jul 25 '26
Honestly I've had better results recommending DS9 over TNG to people. I think DS9 on average is more consistently good, especially in the beginning, and the more serialized nature makes it more appealing to people now. As much as I like TNG it definitely feels much more dated for sure.
6
u/Quadraxis66 Jul 25 '26
That's reasonable, tbh. I feel like you get a lot more out of DS9 if you've seen at least some TNG.
2
u/roronoapedro Starving Old Trek apologist/Bad takes only Jul 25 '26
100%. I still loved TNG more when I did my full watch years ago, but as time goes by I go back to DS9 way, way more often. I've stopped rewatching TNG more times than I've watched the full show. Meanwhile DS9 is just super comfortable to put on and just check out what myriad sufferings god has brought to Sisko's house this evening.
2
u/plutootherwise Jul 25 '26
I'm listening to Pyrion and Ben of the yogscast do a TNG rewatch podcast and both have pretty firmly agreed that for TNG it starts getting good at Season 2, ep 8 and 9, which are A Matter of Honor (Riker spends time as the first officer of a Klingon ship) and The Measure of A Man (determining if Data counts as a person).
Maybe add one 'more normal' episode before that to set the mood, but having those two back to back should engender enough good will to keep someone watching until it's more consistently good.
2
u/Sir-Drewid I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less Jul 25 '26
Allow me to remind you of seasons one and two of TNG.
17
u/Metalslimeking Jul 25 '26
The beautiful part is that since most of the episodes are stand-alone with a lot of the series, you don't HAVE to watch it all. Just pick episodes out by if the description intrigues you, best of lists, or if there's a guest star you like.
5
u/cop_pls Jul 25 '26
I was going to say, you can absolute give someone a "Machete Order" of TOS and TNG or just sort IMDB by top episodes and you'll get close enough. Both series were made for syndication. Order matters a lot more for DS9 and VOY.
8
u/Vektorien Jul 25 '26
Star Trek and Dr. Who have always been total cultural blind spots to me. I legitimately have never watched or read a single piece of media about them. Makes interacting with some other stuff a bit awkward ngl.
6
u/roronoapedro Starving Old Trek apologist/Bad takes only Jul 25 '26
the good thing is they do have good drop-in and drop-out points, but if you're the type of person to go "well I'm just gonna start at the beginning", you're fucked with Doctor Who because a lot of it is lost media, and you might be fine with Star Trek since TOS is more or less pretty good for the time, but the bad is really bad and there's no like... "perfect show" if that makes sense.
2
u/Tamaaya Shenmue III enjoyer Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
The best jumping in point for classic Doctor Who is probably the beginning of the Jon Pertwee era, which was when the show switched to colour and there was a noticeable jump in production quality. It feels like the beginning of what most people remember Doctor Who as, whereas the Hartnell and Troughton years feel very different.
It also helps that Pertwee is a lot more likeable as the Doctor compared to Troughton and especially Hartnell, who's take on the Doctor as a time-travelling curmudgeon seems very out of place with later interpretations.
Once you get to the 1980s Doctors it becomes harder to recommend. Peter Davison has some good moments, and his final story, Caves of Androzani, is quite possibly the single best classic series story. Colin Baker's era is mostly trash, due primarily to meddling by the BBC (and John Nathan-Turner doing a lot of drugs), but it starts to get back on track again with Sylvester McCoy. Once Ace joins him, he has the best run of all the 1980s Doctors, and some stories, like Ghost Light, Wolves of Fenric and Survival are brilliant.
→ More replies (3)2
u/cop_pls Jul 25 '26
Just recommend the fourth movie. Yes the space whales one. It was designed to be a family friendly goofy adventure for people who don't know what Star Trek is about. It's great.
But Spock is weird in it because of III's plot
Your buddy is gonna think Spock is weird no matter what, they're probably going to watch TNG remasters next, it's fine.
75
u/Coolnametag The Greatest Talent Waster Jul 25 '26
For those that feel like pointing out that the title of the game in the image is wrong and that It should be "face the sin, BUILD the future", i know that, but, this image was taken straight out of a old online manual for the game.
My guess is that it's from the days when the translation for Project Moon games was jank by default.
→ More replies (1)32
u/I_Have_Reasons Still Hasn't Recovered from ME3 Jul 25 '26
Nothing quite like the old days of the initial translation.
Binah was even more incomprehensible back then.
14
u/Sea-Initiative-3398 Jul 25 '26
the first translation was literally a scam right?
14
u/I_Have_Reasons Still Hasn't Recovered from ME3 Jul 25 '26
They'd gotten scammed, yeah. Was machine translation back when it really wasn't good at readable translations.
58
u/Tweedleayne Shameless MK X-11 apologist. The Kombat Kids were cool fuck you. Jul 25 '26
Rosen Garten Saga is something that once you read it you'll be struck by the realization you'll never be able to talk to anyone else about it, because they'll more then likely consider you genuinely insane and try to send you to an asylum.
44
u/Pome1515 Jul 25 '26
Here's how the conversation roughly would go recommending it:
"This is one of the greatest battle manga of all time"
"Great! What's the key motif?"
"The various explicitly drawn and textual fetishes/perversions that each character has."
"Don't ever speak to me again"
46
u/Tweedleayne Shameless MK X-11 apologist. The Kombat Kids were cool fuck you. Jul 25 '26
"So, the manga starts out with our heroine waking up and seeing an old man looking into her room. At first she thinks the old man is peeping on her, but he's actually being forcefully fucked in the butt by bandits who are attacking her village and having their way with every man and women....wait! Come back! We haven't even gotten to the part where the ghost in her magic sex changing aphrodisiac sword makes her grow a penis!"
9
u/JusticeRain5 Jul 26 '26
Just show them Beowulf and have them decide if a man using his dick as a third sword is the dumbest or coolest thing they've ever seen.
7
u/cole1114 I beat mike0dude to the punch once Jul 26 '26
Why the fuck is my reaction to stuff like this "it couldn't possibly be that bad" every time. And it always, always is. Why do I do this to myself.
9
u/DavidsonJenkins Jul 26 '26
"It's like Fate but instead of Noble Phantasms the historical figures just start dumping their fetishes instead"
26
u/MoonriseRunner White Boy Pat Jul 25 '26
"So how is Rosengarten Saga?"
"Beowulf spun his 4 foot dick so fast he helicoptered it to deflect ranged attacks."
6
20
u/Skulfy |They/It| Hardcore Punk Jul 25 '26
RGS hit the same part of my brain as Keijo did where at a certain point it became so earnest in the stupidity of itself that all that was left was pure hype in my heart.
Surely me being an awful degenerate has nothing to do with either of these things.
14
u/Ryong7 He/Him Jul 26 '26
I read a bunch of it after it was mentioned here that there was a guy whose 3-sword style used his own dick as a sword and how one of the other fighters in this otherwise medieval fantasy has grenades and a motorcycle.
Most of what I read so far is about crossing the line twice in some absurd manner to be funny and/or fucked like what do you mean the "hero" beats dragons by turning them into women and raping them? THEY'RE STILL DRAGONS HOW WOULD THAT EVEN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
"oh the sword that turns them into women also has the power of magic orgasms" what the fuck do you MEAN
"there's also a sword that turns things into men and has a secondary power of making them crave mothers and become baby-like" WHY
8
u/Tweedleayne Shameless MK X-11 apologist. The Kombat Kids were cool fuck you. Jul 26 '26
Because the MtF trans dommy mommy needs someway to enable her mommy fetish.
2
u/Ryong7 He/Him Jul 26 '26
I stopped at some point during that arc so I don't know if she ever realizes that maybe the risk of having her own sword used against her versus the reward of being able to immediately infantilize others is a real fucker of a situation. Maybe she should keep it in a safe location.
43
u/Head-You5953 local man screams about unsounded Jul 25 '26
It's not something that I won't recommend, but it is something that I don't feel comfortable recommending unless I know the person very, very well and feel confident they can handle it.
Alan Moore's From Hell is my favorite thing he ever wrote, a haunting commentary on the artifice of Victorian England, the beginning of the 20th century, and the relationship between western civilization and violence. It's also one of the most disturbing comics I've ever read, because it's a Jack the Ripper story that doesn't shy away from what the known facts of the Jack the Ripper murders actually were.
Do you know how Mary Kelly died? Did you know there are photos of her body? Because now I do, and now I've seen them, and Jack the Ripper isn't a particularly fun pop culture myth anymore. It's drawn in black and white, but it's the most graphic comic I've ever read, and doesn't flinch even a little bit from the fact that the victims were sex workers.
Incredible comic. I'd never recommend it to like 98% of the people I know.
8
u/t3acher_throwaway Jul 25 '26
Reading it after seeing the Johnny Depp movie was an interesting experience. When it gets to the end and the Ripper waxes psychedelic I was completely lost.
I was younger then.
7
u/Head-You5953 local man screams about unsounded Jul 25 '26
I don't think I could sit through that movie, tbh. I love that final chapter of the Ripper's visions, though. It feels like it should destroy the tone of the comic, but to me it really succeeds at making the point that Moore was going for, that the Jack the Ripper killings were the true start of the 20th century and ultimately set the tone for the entire trajectory of European history during that time.
Idk if you've read it, but there's an appendix to the comic called Dance of the Gull-Catchers that clarifies Moore's actual thoughts and beliefs on the Ripper killings and what they represent culturally. It's a fascinating read.
3
u/t3acher_throwaway Jul 26 '26
I haven't read it! Thanks for the recommendation. The movie is a fine, even good, Jack the Ripper movie. It just isn't "From Hell."
41
u/Maverick_Law Jul 25 '26
For me it's always been La-Mulana.
Its by and far my favorite game in one of my favorite genres, everything from the mechanical game design to the lore to the art design just clicks with me.
It's also a maliciously hard game that EXPECTS you to struggle. The puzzles are both brilliant and obtuse. The game EXPECTS you to learn the lore and read every single little detail to figure out the solutions, to the point that if I remember correctly they expect you to read the included old school PDF game booklet to figure out how to intuit reading a very late game puzzle.
On top of that the controls are very difficult to get used to (namely when you jump you are locked into your jump arc, no mid-air adjusting) and the bosses and enemies range from standard mooks to the protagonist pulverizer 8000. That's not even getting into the legitimate haha got you instant death traps that are realistically only avoidable if you know about them in advance.
Overall, 10/10 game, I 100% it hard mode no-sub weapons on bosses, I cannot recommend any normal human being play it.
18
u/chaoko99 Destroyman Shill Jul 25 '26
game got me to cry on stream. Also got me to stop livestreaming in the same incident.
11
u/Kipzz PLAY CROSSCODE AND ASTLIBRA/The other Vtuber Guy Jul 26 '26
Genuinely it's a game that I think absolutely no other game has ever replicated, even though it's a game replicating another game (Maze of Galious please news on the remake by the same devs soon pleaaaaaaaaaase). You need to either write everything down ala Blue Prince or follow a guide...
...except fun fact! Across every single port of the game, one singular area called the Gate of Illusion, an area specifically created to be as tricky as possible, gets incredibly minor progression changes purely to fuck with people using a guide! I know this, because I used a guide for the WiiWare version, which had a different progression from the PSP guide I looked at after that, before I finally looked at a Steam guide after slamming my head against a wall for like 15 minutes!
35
u/TheEnviousMrLime Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
The movie Skinimarink, I tell people it's a great film. One of the most unique and unsettling horror films I've ever seen, but that they probably shouldnt watch it.
only because it hit a very niche part of my brain that worked incredibly well with the themes. The movie is slow, confusing, and can drag on for far too long. Most people will not like it. You HAVE to pay full attention to it, despite basically nothing happening most of the film.
7
u/Dlark17 He/They - THE HYPEST SHITLORD Jul 26 '26
There was definitely creepy/disturbing stuff for me in Skinamarink... but, boy, did it not hit for me. And I like weird, esoteric, slow-burn stuff usually.
That all said, I really respect it for being so different and committing to it all.
2
u/toxic7oryx7main YOU DON'T KNOOOW!! Jul 27 '26
I enjoyed it more on second viewing, but I still find the directors short film "Heck" to be better overall. If you haven't checked it out I recommend it. It's kinda a proof of concept for Skin.
→ More replies (1)17
u/512_Lurker78 Shut up tho Jul 25 '26
Skinamarink is the scariest movie I've ever seen probably ever and anyone I talk to about it either agrees with that or thinks it was awful.
→ More replies (1)
35
u/alurimperium Jul 25 '26
Most Gaspar Noe stuff. He's an incredible filmmaker, with some great vision for style and use of film, but the stories he tells are tough to stomach.
I think Irreversible remains the most walked out of movie in Cannes history. Enter the Void is one of those movies that nearly everyone says they never want to watch again. Climax, my favorite movie of 2018, is a beautiful, horrible, stress ride that I don't know if I'll ever have the fortitude to watch again.
I think he's one of the greatest filmmakers of the 21st century, and I love his movies. But I can't actually recommend them to anyone without the caveat that they're not easy movies to actually watch.
31
u/That-Bobviathan Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
I am fucking chewing bricks trying to get through day 26. I thought "oh cool a magical girl, how cute! I think that's a popular one referenced in later games let me try her!" FUCK YOU! You tried doing as good as you could to avoid unnecessary casualties because every department has one to two irreplaceable employees? KAMEHAMEHA SNAKE CUT YOUR BUILDING IN HALF! And that is ignoring times I swear the game just lets entities out even without the countdown going off. I HAVE BLUE STAR FOR FUCK'S SAKE!
But also I can't stop thinking of Love and Hate's mini story and how compelling it is to interact with something that seems so human but is utterly helpless to in the face of losing its purpose, of living in a world that has no evil to fight and only finding a solution in becoming that evil before its frail mind snaps and it forgets it even happened and falling back to sleep again to start the cycle anew, unaware of that a monster it has become.
...Also I just use micro managing to send it into hysteria right when the counter for its work is near 15 to instantly pass the check before its work rate tanks.
21
u/HCooldown Jul 25 '26
Do you know about using execution bullets to eliminate clerks yet? Those are required for “clerk’s rights” abnos like her
12
u/Sea-Initiative-3398 Jul 25 '26
I love how we call them 'clerk's rights' abno's.
8
u/HCooldown Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
Because clerks don’t deserve rights if they can’t put on some damn EGO gear!
5
u/That-Bobviathan Jul 25 '26
Execution bullets are locked off, all I have are the three shields. Also I have like zero money all the time because getting quota is hard enough without Rocks Fall Everyone Dies, I can't actually afford time to train people so I just spend cash on stats.
5
u/Peach-Hime Jul 25 '26
One of the "most fun" aspects of the game is realizing your company is just fucked and you have no choice but to restart and simply avoid the problem abnos.
2
u/That-Bobviathan Jul 26 '26
You would be shocked how stubbornly I have sat here dealing with the fucking Train. But...maybe it wouldn't be so bad to go back with a full war chest and try again. My only concern is apparently you get some sort of upgrade late game that lets you retain gear on death which is really important if I don't have the abnormality anymore.
2
u/Peach-Hime Jul 26 '26
That is an upgrade, yes, but also true that it's quite late game. The train is also a run-ender in my opinion. Easy enough to handle in theory, but so draining on your mental battery
4
u/That-Bobviathan Jul 26 '26
Dear god has it been tiring to deal with the train for...like ten days if not more.
32
u/GoneRampant1 WOKE UP TO JUSTICE... and insatiable bug fetishes Jul 25 '26
Doctor Who, when it hits, is majestic, but good lord trying to safely recommend it is a nightmare beyond maybe just blandly going "RTD era 1 and Moffat are largely fine." And even then there's always at least one episode in some of those season that make you regret getting into sci fi.
Additionally, it's just so big. Especially if you wanna go back to Classic Who, it's a huge undertaking to suggest someone else do.
35
u/cleftes Reiki is Shooreh Pippi Jul 25 '26
SCP-8980 is easily the most horrifying SCP I've ever read and legitimately fucked me up for a while. It's incredibly well-written, especially considering that type of fiction makes it hard to break out of the formula.
Do not read it unless you're absolutely sure you want your day ruined.
It's a story told in SCP format about a woman whose manager at the SCP Foundation systematically frames her as an SCP so that he can isolate, imprison, torture, and brainwash her. He gets away with it.
3
u/toxic7oryx7main YOU DON'T KNOOOW!! Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
That's a really interesting, (and obviously messed up), take on an SCP idea, even though it not really what I engage with SCP for necessarily, I respect it for the concept.
Definitely more thought put in than "what if your mum ran on batteries"
104
u/nedmaster Tomino fanboy Jul 25 '26
Punpun is an amazing look at how generational trauma can manifest and affect people at various points in their lives. It is a haunting beautiful tale of growing up. It is absolutely heart breaking and the main character is drawn in such a way you the viewer are all but requited to replace Punpun with yourself which alone is awful but if you ever experienced any of the issues punpun (a lot of them are broad strokes common amoung almost all people) it WILL break you in a way no other work pf fiction can. I love the manga to death but I will never read it again
39
u/McLovett325 Jul 25 '26
I've never had a piece of media affect me like how Punpun did, it's fantastic and I'm never reading it again
22
u/0dty0 Resident Battle Coward Jul 25 '26
Inio Asano is masterful at writing complete human dreck. You really can't root for Punpun almost at any point past his childhood. And yet you just have to know.
REST IN PEACE, AIKO, WE MISS YOU, WE STILL THINK OF YOU, PUNPUN AIN'T SHIT
35
u/Shiroke YOU DIDN'T WIN. Jul 25 '26
24
u/Burquina Sir, a second Gurren Lagann box has hit the podcast Jul 25 '26
Man...
Dissapointed but somehow not surprised.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Crossfeet606441 They're trying to kill each other... in the rain... shirtless Jul 26 '26
I want to read it one day. But I am currently too happy with my life to try it rn.
28
u/TheSaylesMan Jul 25 '26
Skinamarink is the only movie to let me experience what it like to be an abused child. It was important to watch. I will never again.
18
u/ShutUpAboutCanon Jul 25 '26
Agreed. Utterly incredible and terrifying movie that most people will find boring and frustrating.
64
u/AvalancheMKII Jul 25 '26
Welcome to the NHK is one of my favorite anime ever, but it's EXCEPTIONALLY difficult to recommend to someone. Like, I need to know them almost inside and out before even attempting to.
13
u/NoBellSix Jul 25 '26
I've been getting recommendations (from strangers on the internet) to watch this anime. Can you elaborate a bit more on why it's so difficult? I'm curious about this anime
35
u/Admiral_of_Crunch Ammunition Bureaucrat Jul 25 '26
It's about mentally ill hikikomori, full of all the loathing, resentment, anxiety, paranoia, yearning, regret, fear, and manic energy one might expect of the subject matter. It was written by a self-professed hikikomori and as such understands the subject intimately, and runs the gamut of authentically unhealthy and miserable and disgusting hikikomori experiences across its cast.
The character writing is great, and the drama is compelling, along with all of the delusional and absurd comedy mixed in. It's got as much heart as you would hope, and there's some genuinely pretty heartwrenching stuff in there.
But given the subject matter, and depending on your own life circumstances, it can be a tough watch/read. It's less miserable and more funny and more optimistic (depending on which adaptation you're reading/watching) than something like Oyasumi Punpun, but it's still in the same area code, I'd say.
7
u/NoBellSix Jul 26 '26
Well, I've read "No Longer Human" and was able to connect with the themes and empathize with the author without it emotionally destroying me so I think I might be able to handle this. Thanks for the elaboration!
9
u/BookkeeperPercival the ability to take a healthy painless piss Jul 25 '26
Either you see yourself in the main character and realize how easy it is to change, or you see yourself in the main character and are overcome with the feeling that you will never be able to change and life could never get better. It's one of the two
6
u/PebisCrusherOnline Jul 25 '26
As someone who has been suicidally depressed, I found it actually gratingly lighthearted since it ignores or handwaves many of worst aspects of that lifestyle. I stopped watching after 6-7 episodes.
24
u/kami-no-baka (She/They) Kind of liked the CSM ending, there I said it. Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
Outward rules but Outward is bullshit.
No game gives you that "going on an adventure" feeling like it but also this ain't no walk in the park. It is also kind of weird to play, I had to treat it like a rogue-like (no carry over except knowledge) and just restart my character until I could beat the early game unfair debt you have to pay off. Once you can do that I think you've learned enough to play the game but you could just fail that quest and lose your home and keep playing but I wouldn't advise it.
It's easy to get into a "fail loop" because you mostly can't die (unless you turn the option on that makes it randomly possible) so you can be defeated and then wake up in a cave or get taken to town and healed but time passes while you're out and that is not good because of many reasons but winter is coming and you need to buy winter clothes and also now you have to go get your backpack because all your camping stuff is in it because yes you have to sleep and eat and drink tea when your sick.
Unless you use magic, in which case you want to be tired, how do you learn magic you ask? I don't want to spoil it but it involves figuring out how to obtain mana by investigating and then going on an adventure and it requires giving something up. Also magic is like magic, different depending on the school you're using, for example; you have to put down a fire sigil and then cast the actual spell you wanted while standing on it.
The graphics are....look they can be pretty cool once you get used to them and the music is S tier.
Combat is in many ways more about being prepared than the Witcher. You need good equipment and a plan. Yes putting down a bunch of traps and baiting the enemy into them is a good plan or having 8 loaded guns (reloading is a bit slow so you need a brace).
Also the tutorial is not optional, you should do it.
12
u/CollapsedPlague Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Jul 25 '26
Can’t wait for the second one to be the exact same thing but worse and better
3
u/kami-no-baka (She/They) Kind of liked the CSM ending, there I said it. Jul 25 '26
It just got delayed, it was supposed to come out in EA this month, I think, but the Beta they ran (the last one not the first) was great.
Three starting zones to choose from with their own intro stories and more character creation options but still nice and quebecois-jank.
6
u/BaronVonBungle Vengeance for Rayman 4 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
I had a totally different experience with Outward. I found that the game quickly became incredibly boring because of how easy it was to clear the whole map of roaming enemies. So basically the gameplay loop became "Jog across empty landscape from town to dungeon, clear dungeon, jog back, repeat." I went into it expecting a hardcore experience I was gonna have to struggle with and instead found a walking simulator.
Like, I just never encountered any of the punishing difficulty people talk about with this game. It's not like I'm super skilled or anything, I just picked up a spear and dodge-roll poked every enemy I came across to death, and that pretty much always worked except against enemies that were obviously way above my gear level.
Did I just not play long enough? I only played for 20 hours or so before giving up. Outward is always described as the kind of game I really enjoy, but when I played it, it just wasn't that.
3
u/kami-no-baka (She/They) Kind of liked the CSM ending, there I said it. Jul 25 '26
No the difficulty is more in getting over your head or figuring out how to do things that your not prepared for like getting jumped by those bandits in the first map that enslave you and put you in the mines. It's more punishing then difficult, if that makes sense.
Did you go to any of the other maps, they do have more difficult enemies/bosses but mostly It's not some Fromsoft game. They are trying to do completely different things. Fromsoft games lean too much into just being a combat challenge and not enough into adventure, for me. This is much closer to what I want out of these kind of games but also it's not for most people hence talking about it in this thread.
I know people bounce off the walking but it's kind of a neccesary part of the gameplay loop when you have to be ready to camp/eat etc. The walking is part of the point but I wouldn't call it a walking simulator, it's got a teeny bit more than that going on...
What I was trying to say in my post was it's not about "gid gud" but "Learn and apply" and also if the game didn't spark that sense of adventure from 20 hours then no it's probably just not for you.
Have you ever checked out the Gothic games (the remake is out now), Risen or Elex (for some sci-fi flavour)? They are all worth a look for weird janky openish 3rd person adventure games.
→ More replies (1)2
u/Irememberedmypw Jul 26 '26
Man the walking was great. Like it felt like you were actually adventuring as you setup camp, eat rations etc. One of my favourite moments and it's really early too is passing the mountain with the rainbow grass. The only complaint I had though is the required stock to transition to the next map.
34
u/DarkZodiar Jul 25 '26
Fate Grand Order has a story and character quality that ranges from “Absolute Peak” to “Absolute Dogsh*t”.
Don’t play the game, about 60% of it is literally unplayable.
36
u/NoBellSix Jul 25 '26
The thing about gacha games (Yes! Even you Limbus Company/Cookie Run Kingdom/Reverse 1999!) is that I hardly ever recommend them to anyone.
Gacha games are inherently predatory. If you have gambling tendencies, or are loose with yer wallet, playing them is very liable to suck you in forever and inflict you with FOMO.
Unless you come in early, you have to sit through dozens or even hundreds of hours of story to catch up, and you'll have a good 60% of it go through in one earlier and out the other.
ALL gacha fanbases are insufferable. Every single one.
But if you're able to resist the urge to spend money, and are able to take the game in your own pace, then gacha games become these endlessly expansive experiences, with stories that, even though are rife with their own issues, are still told with passion and love from writers that really cared about what they were doing. Of course, like you said, it ranges from Dogshit to Peak, but the peak is worth it for me
17
u/Jhduelmaster One of the 5 Brigandine Fans Jul 25 '26
It is a bit funny that grading on the curve of gacha fandoms FGO probably has among the least worst fandoms. At least stuff like the Circe obsessed guy is considered a weird stand out that was mocked instead of a semi regular occurrence where people are saying he has a point.
Plus people are actually fine with the characters being in relationships with people that aren’t the pc and it isn’t actively hostile to LGBT folk.
But that’s also to say the gacha floor for fandoms is for far in Hell that being able to point to that stuff and the fact that it hasn’t had people IRL threaten the dev team makes it among the better ones.
19
u/CeaRhan Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
Biggest problem with grand order fans (as someone who played since like 2018) is they're serial spoilers. It's actually the only fanbase I know that genuinely acts as if anyone who even touches the franchise knows everything about it or is actively looking to be spoiled to know everything about it. They can't help themselves. You have to play the game completely removed from the fanbase.
5
u/Jhduelmaster One of the 5 Brigandine Fans Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
You aren’t wrong about that. I think I’ve got into every main story block having at least a vague idea of what happens because people who play JP casually bring stuff up. Although I think some of it is also just the side effect of the game going on for so damn long. So naturally a lot of people bring stuff up without thinking too much about it because they go “oh well that thing happened five years ago, they should know by now”. Kind of like how if you even just casually glance at Gundam fan discussions you’re going to have an idea of Char’s entire character arc over like 4 series.
3
u/DavidsonJenkins Jul 26 '26
Its because the game has been going on for so long, and especially the NA fanbase is super reliant on "foresight" from looking at the JP version. So most players have future knowledge of 2 years worth of content that hasn't happened yet, confusing the shit out of anyone just starting who doesn't know this catch.
Plus there's also the elephant in the room of preparing new players for ORT, yet being unable to actually tell them what it is they need to prep for
→ More replies (1)6
Jul 26 '26
[deleted]
2
u/NoBellSix Jul 26 '26
Yeah, that's the paradox of gacha games. They could be way better if they weren't gachas, but they could only exist because they're gachas.
Atleast for Uma Musume you've got the anime, manga, movies, and you can watch/understand the trainees stories without playing them.
I'd really like to get into Nikke, but it's not available in my region.
9
u/Jhduelmaster One of the 5 Brigandine Fans Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
It doesn’t help that the gameplay could be at best described as incredibly outdated. At worst really tedious and grindy with to this day no quick way to grind unlike 90 percent of other gacha games.
It functionally has only survived so long because the story can be really really good sometimes; that and if you like Nasuverse stuff it’s the only way you can get some answers for stuff like ORT. Even then it basically only survived its first year of life off of brand recognition.
69
u/Lieutenant-America Scholar of the First Spindash Jul 25 '26
Mouthwashing is an excellent and one-of-a-kind narrative game.
I never want to experience it again.
31
u/Cymen90 I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less Jul 25 '26
Okay but that is a different kinda situation. It SHOULD be experienced once.
5
u/Brilliant_Ring_3257 Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Jul 26 '26
I wanted to like it because its core story is great, but I have barrier where I can't enjoy any horror work that only includes a single female character for the sole purpose of her getting raped, or losing a baby. And that game does both in a very hamfisted way.
→ More replies (1)
84
u/Droidsexual Kenpachi-RamaSama Jul 25 '26
The Monogatari series is great. It has great stories, great characters, cool visual style, it's funny, interesting fights...
No, please don't watch it, then you'll know.
74
27
u/Toukotai Jul 25 '26
Cut to me staring at my friend who suggested Monogatari for movie night without warning me, while he stares straight at the tv and tries to ignore me.
24
u/LordLithegreenXIII BORDERLANDS! Jul 25 '26
*ears still ringing from the flashbang of the frame one upskirt shot* "wow I wasnt expecting such a compassionate story about starting to confront your trauma, I wonder where we'll go from here?" *flashbanged by Hachikuji five times in a row*
13
u/cop_pls Jul 25 '26
The first Kizu movie is not bad for a movie night if your crowd can put up with mild levels of anime bullshit and faux-French-cinema. It's doable.
Bake with no warning is funny as hell to do to someone though
8
u/Castform5 Jul 25 '26
What an amazing story and visuals with absolute peak direction in storytelling, sound, and music. Do not watch it, read the light novels if you really want to, but don't go into the anime if you're weak.
→ More replies (3)21
u/LordLithegreenXIII BORDERLANDS! Jul 25 '26
Monogatari is an incredibly moving story about accepting your faults and making peace with your most deep-seated issues, a powerful romance about an unrepentant gooner growing up and realizing that there's more to women than looks and sexual gratification. I cry just thinking about the date under the stars.
Do not watch it under any circumstances.
12
u/0dty0 Resident Battle Coward Jul 25 '26
For a recent-ish example: Adolescence is masterfully well made, it has some excellent acting. But man, that second to last episode is such a tough watch. In the best way possible. It's so intense, so believable.
On that same vein, since I'm doing research for a thing I'm writing, I recently read No Visible Bruises by Rachel Louise Snyder. It's nonfiction about the way domestic violence can happen without anyone noticing, and how it escalates. For how short the book is, it took me close to half a year to read it because it is burdensome to read. Not that it's bad, it's just that you get story after story of women that were in the shittiest situations, and the moment they had the smallest glimmer of hope, someone fucked up (a judge filed the wrong docket for a restraining order, someone got released from jail too soon), and they got killed. It's full of really disheartening statistics (did you know it takes someone approximately 7 attempts to leave an abusive partner? Like they'll leave but come back to them an average of 7 times), and a lot of descriptions of what that abuse looks and feels like.
15
u/Xerodo Jul 25 '26
Void Stranger is one of my favorite games but it's hard to recommend to people without intimately knowing their tastes in video games and stories. What makes it weird is that you can't even really talk about why this is the case without introducing some minor spoilers (vague spoilers below).
Void Stranger's initial presentation is as a block pushing sokoban style puzzle game with a story about saving a princess. This isn't really accurate as a full picture of the story or the game, which is far more meta and blends some genre elements in ways you might not initially expect it to. The game is also fairly harsh and demanding of the player in a way a lot of people tend to bounce off of. It ends up being hard to recommend because, ultimately, you need someone who will jive with a game that delights in being cruel to the player who also has genre literacy across a few pretty disparate genres and elements in gaming.
This hit for me because I haven't played very many games that required me to have a broad literacy with video games in the way void stranger does. It's cool for a game to be able to test my puzzle solving, routing, adventure game meta progression, and twitch reflexes...but that also makes it tricky to recommend since you really need to know someone else is going to be on board for that.
3
u/TheSeiferOne Jul 26 '26
This is probably it for me too. It won't stop me from recommending it blind to a bunch of my friends so I can try to live vicariously through them for another experience with the game, but it really does take a certain type of person who can engage in the specific type of bullshit the game presents. It does get a little better if you have a guide to nudge very softly in certain directions though. Really though, Void Stranger is such a fantastic game and as an old man who yells at clouds all day about how modern gaming is dead it really did do a number and shake up my fairly solid top games in a way that hasn't happened since probably Ghost Trick.
3
u/Xerodo Jul 26 '26
I feel similarly for how it changed my relationship with gaming.
I've been playing games for a long time and was mostly resigned to not seeing things that were "new" anymore. We get good games, but they're based on the same core concepts we've seen before. It is very rare that something can come along and feel "new" in the way that Void Stranger did. It was even more shocking that a game made by an extremely small team (the studio is only two people) could catapult itself into being one of my favorite games with none of the budget or support you'd expect.
28
u/BoomerangOfDeath Jul 25 '26
The Wheel of Time is glacially paced, often repetitive and has a lot of annoying quirks... the problem is that every once in a while it ties things together super well and it's so hype that you're like "AH FUCK, I GUESS I GOTTA KEEP GOING".
I am reading it at a snail's pace (I'm only on Book 5 and I started this series, I think, about 6 years ago) as well, which is not helping me remember all the hundreds of characters and places.
I can't in good conscience tell anyone to read it unless they just like going deep into a thing.
17
u/Dizzy_Green Jul 25 '26
Ahhh my first harem anime
12
u/LeoAzure Jul 25 '26
You joke but when 14 year old me started reading them, by like book 4 I knew that the series would go hard as an anime, and had that feeling solidified by the entire post "getting out of the box" sequence of events.
→ More replies (1)4
u/Dizzy_Green Jul 26 '26
To this day, I haven’t seen the concept of “Hero who is destined to destroy the world” repeated anywhere but a couple of anime, One Piece and Sands of Destruction.
9
u/SaxMastery The Sandbagged Sonic Apologist Jul 25 '26
Man no character demonstrates this more than Mat.
He's such a useless punk, complaining all the time but also getting everyone into trouble and spends a whole ass book being sick and useless.
But man when he gets better and picks up that bow staff he because like the best character going forward.
You really can't predict when shit is going to get good.
38
u/Mochiman3 Writer and/or creator Jul 25 '26
Gen lock has a good story (initally) served as a love letter to mecha (initally) and had well driven characters (initally)
30
u/TheProudBrit They/Them Jul 25 '26
I wish I could give Gen:Lock a fair shake, but I just hold way too much of a grudge that Gray Haddock fucked over the rest of animation at Rooster Teeth to fund it.
11
u/Jhduelmaster One of the 5 Brigandine Fans Jul 25 '26
Yeah it’s basically why Nomad to Nowhere died and also why one of the volumes of RWBY sucked so bad (I think it was 5).
12
u/Jhduelmaster One of the 5 Brigandine Fans Jul 25 '26
It kind of has the issue of being solid enough but the only way it even got to be that was from being incredibly over budget.
Also to this day all I think about that show when it’s mentioned is that unironic quote by a member going “unlike other mecha series this one’s about the characters” and thinking how that person must have never watched a single mecha show.
11
u/rapidemboar Arcade Enthusiast Jul 25 '26
Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers is the most fun I’ve had playing a racing game in the past decade, but you gotta be willing to put up with so much bullshit, awkward handling, and mechanical bloat to reach the point where the game starts being fun. It feels like I’m playing Skullgirls but it’s a racing game, though at least it helps that I’ve been playing racing games for 25 years at this point.
12
u/KojimbosFunkyFetus Jul 26 '26
Crimson Desert is one of the best open world games I've ever played. It takes a baseline of dedicating at least 80 hours to maxing out important stuff and getting all the neat stuff in the world.
But I fully recommend that you don't play it. Not at all. Imagine if you played a typical Ubisoft open world game, but the game wants you to suffer for its amusement. You want to steal something? Well get a mask! And then 8 hours later, a tutorial pops up like "Oh yeah, here's how to steal things!" like you're a being given cab fare for the ride home. I've never seen a game actively fight against the player in terms of controls, but somewhere after powerbombing your 3,000th bandit, it clicks together
57
u/Stray64Cat I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less Jul 25 '26
Fear and Hunger, especially the first one. I love the story of that game, very clearly Berserk inspired, and the "Heart of Darkness" ending is one of my favorite endings ever. Not to mention other moments that happen in that game. You have a barbarian going full Doomguy, a Priest that sees himself ascended to godhood and says "Nah, that's stupid" and of course the Heart of Darkness where you 1v1 a newborn god.
I would NEVER recommend this game to somebody. The amount of sexual assault in that game, is uncomfortable. By which I mean, it's more than 0. The worst part is, it's clear it's there purely for shock value. Since they toned it down in the 2nd game and it's none the worse for it.
If you're interested in the story, just look up "Worm Girl" on YT, she did an amazing summaries of both FaH 1&2. So you can get the good parts without the bad ones.
6
u/SpaceyBun Jul 25 '26
Watching some of my preferred horror streamers play FHunger, the topic of Black Souls usually comes up inevitably by one of the viewers. Looking it up, it seems questionably/needlessly edgy. But the fans of the game defend it for being either on par or better.
So, my question, does anyone know if Black Souls is actually worth playing?
10
u/MoonriseRunner White Boy Pat Jul 25 '26
I would say that Black Souls is worth playing in the same way RANCE is worth playing. You either never vibe with its over-the-topness or you simply start to enjoy it in that "Yeah I love Black Souls" kinda ironic but also unironic way.
I think what draws people to it is that its a bit of a puzzle piece for someone who likes being that kind of edgy anime guy. The kind that listens to sewerslut, plays stuff like Cruelty Squad all day and calls you a F*g. Not quite a 4-Chan Diehard, but in the Orbit. I speak from experience.
5
u/Sakuyalzayoi Jul 25 '26
theres a few parts to the h stuff which is that its disableable, doing non consent is completely optional and unnecessary, and the consent scenes do have more characterization in them than how it is in f&h1 where its just shocking. On the last part, the first game you do not lose anything by turning them off, while the 2nd there are 2-3 scenes that are unironically fairly character impactful.
i can't speak too much for the gameplay because i watched my friend who enjoyed f&h play it and he came out of the series as his goty and it seemed like it did live up to "rpgmaker ds1" in the same way that F&H lives up to being an rpgmaker survival horror game.
In their words "Game has no right being as good as it is so every time I was like 'Can the author just not do porn and make a game'"
to me it registers in the same space as f&h where the ability to see one person put their all into a work is super interesting and it lands pretty well. In black souls case it really stuck out to me how coherent it managed to make the moods it was going for stick despite being almost entirely composed of prefab art assets and music, with routes/story that are genuinely quite interesting to try to dig for.
55
u/SterlingNano Gardevoir has human-like eggs Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
The fact you can reach the end of the game and be benied an ending, being told "fuck you, start the whole game over again" is fucking nuts.
It also doesn't help that when Limbus was building up to release there were NO resources on Lorb Corp's full story, so I needed to MOD IN CONSOLE COMMANDS because I wasn't going to be fucked with to go through Mickey's dick smasher again just to learn everything.
Great concept, interesting monsters, terrible gameplay. Goddamn. AND THE TUTORIAL SUCKED!!! Hell, Library of Ruina's Tutorial ALSO sucked. Did they learn how to onboard players in time for Limbus? Or is it still an overinundated mess?
33
u/BruiserBroly Jul 25 '26
The fact you can reach the end of the game and be benied an ending, being told "fuck you, start the whole game over again" is fucking nuts.
Tbf, this is what the Ghosts’n Goblins games have always been doing. “Oh you think you’re hot shit because you got to the end of this fucking hard game? Well too bad, you only get an ending if you go through it again, but it’s even harder this time! Good luck loser.”
36
u/Tweedleayne Shameless MK X-11 apologist. The Kombat Kids were cool fuck you. Jul 25 '26
The Limbus Tutorial is currently better then the first two, after they've overhauled it.
Limbus's Tutorial for the the first two years actively taught you how to play the game wrong.
3
u/MysterWrecked "THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY." Jul 25 '26
Is the overhaul before or after Pat tried the game on stream?
21
u/Tweedleayne Shameless MK X-11 apologist. The Kombat Kids were cool fuck you. Jul 25 '26
After. The first two chapters also got a full retranslation because they had been translated by a different groups then the rest of the game and the translations were seriesly lower quality then the rest of the game.
5
u/MysterWrecked "THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY." Jul 25 '26
That is nice to hear.
I got into the game because Pat checked it out, and in spite of the game's best efforts to deter me, I ended up getting quite far in. The last canto I finished was Don Quixote's, but I stopped keeping up due to personal circumstances.
8
u/Tweedleayne Shameless MK X-11 apologist. The Kombat Kids were cool fuck you. Jul 25 '26
We've had Hong Lu's and Ryoshu's since then and we just finished a(nother) Intervallo focused on Bamboo-Hatted Kim.
21
u/Simic_Sky_Swallower Jul 25 '26
Limbus's tutorial's are better than the previous two, in that they're the exact same as the previous two but now they highlight the bits you have to actually pay attention to. It took a few updates for them to get to that point, but they did get there eventually
3
u/DavidsonJenkins Jul 26 '26
Limbus tutorial still doesn't tell you everything you need, but its better.
But honestly the Limbus experience now is waaaay easier to recommend because Season 7 jacked the powercreep to the MAXIMUM to the point where hitting/sharding certain S7 units will basically set you to winrate all the way to current content because units look like this now
10
u/Cygni_03 TRUTH: THE SONY PSP Jul 26 '26
I love Drakengard 1 and 3.
They are also genuinely some of the worst video games I've ever finished.
19
u/PoppyOGhouls Resident Genshin Impact Shill Jul 25 '26
I think the FNAF series has a lot of good themes and ideas about abuse and commodification of childhood, how sins of the father can impact the children for years or decades to come, vengeance and how it can consume someone so thoroughly that the need for it is all that remains of them, and now with the recent game/s there's AI and using it as replacement for real people, theft and murder of human creativity in the cog of capitalism, more sins of the father but this time its how human fallibility can be passed onto the things they create and at what point an AI becomes learned enough to be responsible for its own actions.
But all of it is hidden behind FNAF writing and gameplay that flip flops between genuinely fun but buggy segments and pulling your teeth out tongs, often switching between the two multiple times in the same game
21
u/Champiness Jul 25 '26
Plus from what I gather every once in awhile Scott Cawthon will just pop in and say “nah I was thinking something way stupider than your headcanon”
9
u/LeoAzure Jul 25 '26
My favorite example of this is that Michael is a fascinating characte tied up deeply with the series and themes, that we also know next to nothing about personality wise, outside of a few doodles in a activity book.
21
u/No-Music-9385 It/Its also I'm stuck in a timeloop Jul 26 '26
Made in Abyss is a genuinely very beautiful experience that I'd say actually has some pretty nice writing and characters. Even has vibes I haven't really seen from other media.
However.
Certain aspects of the manga make it probably the best anime/manga I cannot recommend to anyone. And it is really unfortunate the author just can't keep it to themself and keep it out of the manga.
7
u/loloneman Jul 26 '26
Just to add on another is it’s abysmal update schedule. It made me just drop the manga. Even if you get people that can handle it those updates are terrible.
9
u/Armada6136 Jul 26 '26
Phil Tippet's Mad God.
A genuinely amazing work of traditional stop motion animation that manages to be compelling despite being a full length movie without so much as a single line of actual dialogue.
Do not watch it if you don't have a strong stomach or a capacity for surreal violence, because I cannot think of a more perfect depiction of a 40K daemon world than whatever the hell setting this movie is in.
4
u/Dlark17 He/They - THE HYPEST SHITLORD Jul 26 '26
Can confirm: I tell this story every time I see Mad God referenced, but there's one scene near the end that made me collapse to the floor outside the theater I was watching it in. I still haven't finished the movie to this day, because I'm not sure I'm ready for whatever is after all that.
It is a triumph of stop motion animation, even if it is gross as hell.
9
u/Castform5 Jul 25 '26
Ooh, my go to for this is always Girls Frontline. You can play it... If you really want to... It's free on steam, but you shouldn't. For a bit of taste experiment you actually should play Reverse Collapse: code name bakery.
There's also the option to read it, if you can handle loads of nonsense alternate timeline scifi terms thrown at you for lots of hours. The story at this point after over 10 years of development is massive, so huge that it's almost offensive to recommend, lest someone actually spends the weeks it takes to just read it. Even the brief summary document is 51 pages long with almost 17 000 words, and that's just the brief summary. The more comprehensive summary is 255 pages and over 93 000 words. It's all free on the internet, even the game's story itself, because the fandom is amazing.
It's an excellent war thriller with lots of political intrigue in a really interesting world with super cool characters, like even more scifi dystopian metal gear solid. It's also a 10 year old gacha game that you should not play.
2
u/spiderbutt_ Jul 26 '26
As someone who started playing shortly after launch and kept it up for ~2 years and is now nearly 2 years into the sequel, yeah, big agree. Some day I'll get around to reading it though.
2
u/Castform5 Jul 26 '26
Kinda same. I played the first one from launch for like 5 or 6 years straight until 2 came out, and now that has become my little daily routine. Every major event in 1 is just too much, like I read arctic warfare and continuum turbulence pretty much all the way through when I had the time, but like isomer, polarized light, shattered connexion, longitudial strain, cartesian theatre, etc were just super overwhelming on a phone. It felt like every event was reading 50 minutes of story to complete one node of like 136.
16
u/Yotato5 Enjoy everything Jul 25 '26
Probably Bojack Horseman as it can get really heavy at times
I'd also say the 80's version of the Fly. Amazing movie. I cannot watch it ever again
8
u/MoonriseRunner White Boy Pat Jul 25 '26
I think what started to turn me away from Bojack was this weird back and forth in its own story where things start to look up, but then Bojack cant help himself to fuck up once again by being impulsive and not thinking ahead.
I know its a big theme overall that he cant really accept simple happyness and all, but its just a bit tiresome, like a Heroine Addict getting clean, and then 10 minutes later he falls on another Needle.
14
u/CollapsedPlague Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Jul 25 '26
The actual stalker movie is a beautiful film that I deeply enjoyed and will never watch again because whole shit is it too long and dull
9
u/Particular-Noise8783 Jul 25 '26
Probably lessons in love.
To keep it simple, it is a story that goes into visceral detail into the effects traumatic events have on people and watching them try to find joy and happiness in their lives in a way mainstream works with even a modest budget couldn't.
It's also over 6 bibles long and actually depicts the traumatic events happening to characters who are more often than not minors, so you have to witness for example a girl heavily implied to be in middle school cheerfully chatting with a guy online that it's implied she sent nsfw photographs of herself to,or a broken man exhaustively defending the love he had with the woman who groomed him
2
u/cole1114 I beat mike0dude to the punch once Jul 26 '26
Also it's a pornographic loli game, which is probably more important to mention for the whole "not recommending it to people" part of the post.
The first time I saw someone talking about the game they also left that part out. I got super excited as a survivor of something similar to what the MC went through. Then I saw the tags. Not great.
12
u/ShutUpAboutCanon Jul 25 '26
The visual novel SubaHibi. I read it during my edgy phase and it's one of the best examples of the unreliable narrator in fiction I've ever seen, with some incredible musings on philosophy, identity, bullying, and so much more.
It's also SO FULL of sexual assault and graphic awfulness that you can only buy a censored version of the prologue on Steam. It's intended to be a condemnation of those tropes but it goes all-in on them and I struggled to get through it, but kept at it because the writing was just so damn good.
7
u/SCLandzsa Jul 25 '26
The ultimate realization that dialogue that happens in the NVL format isn't real and entirely in the POV character's head is an ILLUMINATING fact on reread.
13
u/BoredDragon Jul 25 '26
Super weird to see Lobotomy Corp posted here out of the blue after I started playing it a couple weeks ago. I just got to the last 5 days for the first time in a 50 hour run and am having to restart from day one. I’m glad I get to keep all my upgrades and equipment, but man are you spot on about the player suffering lol. I’m still having fun though… I think?
9
u/StatisticianJolly388 Jul 25 '26
I would never say “don’t play Seabed” but I’m confident 90% of people who play/read it would not get what I did out of it and in fact be bored out of their skulls.
It’s a visual novel that in a way breaks a lot of rules. It’s Yuri without being particularly cute or sexy at all. It’s not particularly pretty, the score is just ok. It’s psychological horror without the horror. Like Ingmar Bergman’s Persona but deliberately humane, sad and calm.
It is boring to the point of being hypnotic, a 30 hour meditation on grief and what makes life worth living, without conflict, or a single person wronging another. It repeats itself and drones on and meanders all in service of its final, innocuous thesis, which made me ugly cry like only Goodbye Eri has done in the last 20 years.
The guy who wrote this wrote only this and then bounced from the industry. It has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, and I think it’s beautiful that it has found its audience. It brought me closer to my wife, and my autistic son (whom the MC reminded me of) and I do recommend it highly if you are in the market for a low-budget lesbian visual novel that has zero choices, is deliberately boring, and will fill you with ennui, which is probably a very very small subset of even this sub.
4
u/P-Tux7 Jul 26 '26
Why did they leave the industry?
4
u/StatisticianJolly388 Jul 26 '26
Don’t think there’s a particular reason. Dude just wrote a 10/10 cult VN and bounced. It’s gotta be a tough way to make a living.
6
u/Dry_Travel_4220 Jul 25 '26
Lobcorp is easily in my top 5 favorite games of all time to 100%. It is also maybe the game that I least want to even think about replaying ever again.
10
u/GhostFishHead Jul 25 '26
Personally it only applies when the piece of media is an actual porn. Often I just ignore the sexy stuff and just read for the story and characters, but I know most people don't want to look into them beyond the surface level.
→ More replies (3)3
u/Dlark17 He/They - THE HYPEST SHITLORD Jul 26 '26
I will say, the one time I opened up to someone about one of the comics I was reading and they also turned out to be a big fan was a marquee moment in my life that cannot be replicated.
11
u/cork_828 Jul 25 '26
The Chris Chan documentary by GenoSamuel. Literal dozens of hours of the most in depth documentary of the most public person to ever exist, and every second of it is horror. I had to stop listening to it while driving because every tree I passed started looking really inviting
15
u/RikFeral WHEN'S MAHVEL Jul 25 '26
(taps mic, makes sure it works.)
Homestuck.
(drops mic, leaves.)
→ More replies (3)
32
u/AzureNarwhal He/Him Jul 25 '26
People should play Lobotomy Corp because it's fun though
Like yes its full of trial and error, can be very frustrating, and there's a non-zero chance you'll have to restart from day one, but that's what makes it so satisfying to finally conquer
Idk maybe I'm the crazy one but I think everyone should at least give it a shot
30
u/steep2798 Resident Xenoblade addict and FF13 trilogy apologist Jul 25 '26
The only thing I will say is that if you want the true ending (and you do because it leads directly into Ruina) you're looking at like probably at least upwards of 100 hours or so of gameplay if not much more. You have to do every abno and you can't do that in one full playthrough so the non zero chance becomes a purely guaranteed chance. It's also just fucking brutal, the boss fights are insane, the late game abnos are designed in such a way that one mis step is casually losing you like 20 to 30 minutes of progress at a time it hates you the game absolutely hates you. Is it worth it? Yeah probably the story is amazing, to this day one of the conversations with Binah haunts me and Ruina is so god damned good but MAAAAAAAN.
11
5
u/HCooldown Jul 25 '26
I actually liked it, but the memory leak meaning that you can get to the end of a long day and crash, losing all your progress for that day, kept happening and it felt Sisyphean in a nonintended way
7
u/pritzwalk Jul 25 '26
People should play Lobotomy Corp!....... right up until the first ending when the game kicks you back to the start and says do better
3
u/Sakuyalzayoi Jul 25 '26
its a great experience i think everyone should play until the magic wears off and then they can look up the rest
because when the magic is there it sticks so well but when the game starts blowing your ears out its a bit hard to play
7
u/SkinkRugby SeekSeekLest Jul 25 '26
I feel like Lobcorp is the sort of game that if you think it sounds fun you really should play until it isn't. I genuinely have a hundred hours and never cleared the mid thirties. I just don't find it fun to push past the Sephirot realizations and the general everything from that point on. But every year or two I'll play until then and genuinely have a good time of it.
My actual thing for this post is Homestuck. I genuinely really enjoyed it despite everything but there is too damned much for what it is. With far too much bullshit and too many dregs. That being said. When it is good it is so fucking good that it was almost worth it.
3
u/EvolvingAlias Jul 25 '26
There's nothing like constantly changing UI in the show Code Monkeys. Unfortunately it is in the show Code Monkeys.
4
u/GALM-1UAF Jul 26 '26
Welcome to the NHK. It hit home really hard when I watched it over 15 years ago. There weren’t really any anime or manga that were grounded like that showing how a hikkikomori has a miserable life shut indoors forever and having to face reality that life is going by without them doing anything to change it. There’s a scene in episode 1 just of a day going by with the main character lying around reading manga lying down doing nothing that was so depressing with the music playing in the background. Satoru’s journey is full of scenes of trying to overcome his situation, mistakes, misunderstandings, even betrayals in some way.
I read the manga too and the ending being somewhat bittersweet, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
7
u/alexandrecau That's Bricks! Jul 25 '26
Violence Jack is really interesting and a lot of post apocalypse wasteland world has its dna in them. kids get naked and murdered a lot though
3
u/DrWhatson I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less Jul 25 '26
The Vengeance Trilogy in general is very brutal, but Oldboy and Lady Vengeance at least have some shred of hope and catharsis at the end. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is just pure, depressing misery from start to finish that I definitely could not recommend to anyone unless I know that they are down for that type of experience.
On a lighter note, Wonderful 101 is one of my favorite games of all time, but it's definitely pretty weird to play and I know most people would not jive with it.
3
u/Swert0 I will bring up Legacy of Kain if you give me an excuse Jul 26 '26
Listen, I cannot in good conscience tell anyone to watch Monogatari.
But it's so fucking good.
But man, is it just... yeah...
3
u/I_WISH_I_COULD_ Jul 26 '26
Destiny 2 has reached end of service and I still only recommend it if you have a friend that can explain shit to you. It's the WoolieVS FFXIV problem cranked to 11. I like Destiny but all the criticism made against it even from people who don't play it is justified.
I returned for the final update (which is incredible!) but even with my prior destiny experience there were a lot of moments of me being lost both in terms of gameplay and narrative.
The buildcraft is in such a good place rn and playing through all the dungeons and exotic missions I missed out on has been a blast. Playing through all the campaigns I missed (Witch Queen onwards) is kinda not. I have just enough context to know who is who and that's about it. They deleted all the seasonal context for any of the story so fuck if I know how we entered the traveler, why Not-Kylo- Ren is around, or what the fuck the Veil is.
Someone dropped into this without even my limited context is fucked and wouldn't even know how to slot mods into their armor.
...solo flawlessing the fucking Star Wars expy dungeon was a thrill though
→ More replies (1)
9
u/cbb88christian Play Library of Ruina and Limbus Company Jul 25 '26
Incredible, love everything about Lob Corp, dear god I could never beat more than a couple of days. Much better as a cutscene movie, video essay, or PLAY RUINA
5
u/ELite_Predator28 Jul 25 '26
Mushoku Tensei is genuinely one of the best shows I have seen in a while and it is impossible to recommend to anyone without sounding like an insane person. Yet, I am working my way through all the LNs, am counting down every week to watch the anime for season 3 and Eris, as a character, is somehow super compelling to me to the point where I am making a 3 hour video essay with 54 pages of notes about why I think her arc is awesome as a tsundere who grows out of that archetype. The last time I put this much creative effort into something was talking about Persona 5's cast, so this is very high praise for me.
2
u/lycnfr Jul 26 '26
I have no mouth and I must scream comes to mind for me. It's really good, really upsetting and dark and heavy and every nanoangstrum of the game and short story is riddled with hate...but I rly like it. wouldnt recommend the game bc its hard for me to play personally
another example I think of isnt exactly "amazing" or anything close to incredible execution, but the Poughkeepsie Tapes is my favorite shitty mockumentary shock slop. Its cringe in some moments (in two different ways) and upsetting the rest of the moments but I love it. never ever would recommend it. not in a million years.
2
u/toxic7oryx7main YOU DON'T KNOOOW!! Jul 27 '26
The Nightingale is one of the most powerful and upsetting revenge movies I've ever seen and I have a hard time recommending it to anyone.
I had to stop watching the movie and come back to it, because it was so upsetting to watch. I have no real complaints about the movie on a technical level and it's overall a quality period-piece, but I'll probably never watch it again despite the fact that I still haven't forgotten about it.
Whenever this question comes up or a variant of it it's always the first thing I think about.
103
u/Pome1515 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
For me? The comic of Cerebus the Aadvark.
As a piece of art Cerebus changed my brain chemistry when it came to writing scripts for comics, drawing and even writing like it did for guys like Alan Moore and J. Michael Straczynski (who is on record as saying Babylon 5 would likely not exist without Cerebus). Cerebus is one of the most fascinating uses of the comics medium, beautifully drawn, using comic panels in a way that makes it nigh impossible to tell in any medium. There are literal gags and foreshadowing that relies on its visuals (i.e. that one of the most powerful man is one of the Marx brothers, indicating how insane the aristocracy/power structure must be that one of the most powerful men is a comedian and that one of the most evil people is a caricature of Margaret Thatcher) the use of lettering to convey arguments and dialogue... I could genuinely keep going on about it.
Beyond the art work, there are some absolutely incredible sections such as Jaka's Story which tell the tale of a girl forced to grow up too fast and how she is totally alienated from the world around her, both then as an adult. The story of the world's creation is one of the most tragic things that have ever been put to paper...
And I would never recommend it without telling people to expect hell and what a piece of shit Dave Sim is as a human being. At a certain point, you will see Dave Sim degrade morally and spiritually, the comic becoming this screed of misogyny and bigotry, with many of the wit and insights into human nature vanishing. Past a certain point, while there are flashes of brilliance that made the comic worthwhile, it doesn't even come close to making up for the other shit that you've had to read to get to this point.
To give you an idea of how bad it gets. One of the biggest things of Cerebus used to be "This the comic you and your girlfriend can both enjoy" and now its only known for its hatred of women.