Believe me, no one gives a damn about a critic.

The game is deliberately pretentious? Okay. Then the negative reviews are justified.

Story checks out!

No, the game is really just pure, uncut heroin for engineering nerds. It’s designed to appeal to their deep desires for automation, clever designs, and optimization.

Those people don’t really care about economics, they care about creating little engines that process one type of resource into another.

Yes, it seems we do have different ideas of the word medieval. To me, medieval is not an abstract idea, it’s a specific period in European history. To be medieval a setting has to bear significant resemblance to that period.

This is not medieval. It’s very ornate but it bears no resemblance whatsoever to medieval art or architecture. If anything, it’s closer to Victorian than medieval. Everything I’ve seen in HK screenshots tells me it’s a fantasy pastiche of elements. It has no affinity with any particular period in human culture. Rather, it’s a cut-and-paste construction. (I hate the word appropriation because it implies theft. I do not want to imply that).

Like if a fantasy game is set on Mars with a bunch of green skinned Martians as characters then it’s not medieval even if the characters use Anglo-Saxon instead of English. It’s a pastiche of science fiction, fantasy, and medieval elements and it suffers from the same issue that a lot of bad Star Trek episodes had (see: planet of hats), which is verisimilitude:

Why did this society, which otherwise seems completely alien, just happen to evolve a conspicuous element that’s uncannily similar to an element in human history?

Shakes fist in the general direction of California!

If I could push the red button and wipe out all AI on the planet and replace it with alcohol…

Edit: No idea why that GIF converted to a JPEG on upload.

Edit 2: this work?

HK games are not set in China, but they are both firmly set in a medieval fantasy world

??!

I guess we have completely different ideas of the word medieval. This to me looks like a completely separate, unique fantasy world with no resemblance whatsoever to a historical medieval setting of the sort that games like D&D are based on.

It’s fine if they have created this wonderful unique setting of their own, but then it leaves me with the question of how the language aspects of medieval society ended up there despite all the other differences. I mean these characters don’t even resemble humans!

I have played plenty of other games where characters speak in a classical style. Unless it’s being done to mark the characters as old fashioned (or the world is literally set in medieval times) then it comes off as extremely pretentious.

Edit: I know Hollow Knight is sacred in the indie game community. I’m just saying this is something that annoys many people (including me) who prefer verisimilitude and authenticity.

It’s not about liking/not liking poetry, it’s about credibility and verisimilitude. When a character says something, is it credible for the character to have said that? A guy walking around in the Harry Potter wizarding world speaking Shakespearean English is not credible, he’s a laughingstock.

I don’t know much about Hollow Knight but from what I can see it is not set in a fantasy Classical Chinese setting. Having characters in the game speak in the Classical Chinese style is not credible. It does not fit the setting, regardless of the broader similarities between Hollow Knight’s setting and Wuxia novels. It’s culturally tone deaf.

I’ve never played either game but I’ll be honest: that English text looks really pretentious to me. I can imagine how bad things could get if that were carried over into the Chinese translation.

Everyday Chinese speech is very plain, blunt, and utilitarian. The Great Classical Chinese novels are anything but. They are as important (arguably even more so) to Chinese as Shakespeare is to English. Speaking in that style should come off just as pretentious in Chinese as a video game character speaking Shakespearean style would in English. Generally, in English fiction (especially TV shows), characters are brutally mocked for speaking in that style unless they are literally reading, rehearsing, or performing Shakespeare.

Yes, and not every rapist is a serial rapist who goes around preying on everyone he can get his hands on. I think those guys are a minority within a minority. More commonly may be guys who did it once and later regretted it and never did it again, or in between (went through a phase in college but later got married and settled down).

It’s not hard to see that if non-rapist guys refuse to associate with rapists, then maybe rapists are more likely to band together and commit their crimes as a group.

It’s a geodesic; a straight line in spherical geometry.

The US has turned into Ferenginar so gradually I didn’t even notice!

I support thrifting 100% though. Buy stuff from real people, stuff that’s good quality that somebody no longer needs, and avoid buying newly manufactured disposable junk.

To be fair, I think it’s pretty hard to get legitimate reviews from happy customers of a PSU. If it’s doing its job, you don’t even notice that it’s there. However if it fails, you’re likely to be highly motivated to go leave a negative review.

Not saying this is a good PSU. I’ve never used it; it could be a piece of crap with leaky recycled caps for all I know. The above issue is a possibility with many different utilitarian products.

SQ has a bunch of tool stuff going on. The crystals which unlock certain areas (functioning as keys), the relics of Dracula which let you see things you couldn’t otherwise or break certain blocks, the holy water which can be used as both a weapon and as a tool for detecting false floors, and oak stakes which you need to pierce the protective spells around Dracula’s relics.

Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest follows the formula. Unlike the first game, Simon’s Quest is an open world game with lots of backtracking. It has experience points, shops to buy things, and puzzles to solve by using key items in the right locations.

The game also features upgradable whips, secondary weapons to find, and even a day/night cycle.

Metroid didn’t pioneer the progressive tool-based unlocking system anyway though. The Legend of Zelda was built on that concept and released before Metroid (in Japan; in the US Metroid was released a week before LoZ, but both were a year after the Japanese releases).

I don’t. I just use the phone because it works well with my laptop. My previous one was all banged up and scratched, so I wouldn’t really call it a status symbol.

I don’t really care about status though. My friends are a bunch of misfits. If it bothers you that people are using something as a status symbol, perhaps you’re more concerned about status than you realize. I’d love to just advise you to stop caring about that but it’s not that easy. Status seeking is a pretty common, normal behaviour.