lorabe

So i have not bought a GNU/Linux phone for several reasons, one of which is that neither the ecosystem nor the devices themselves seem to be mature enough to have a stable experience.

To begin with, GTK3 is far from ideal on these devices, and many applications have not migrated to GTK4 which does take advantage of the GPUs... more or less. I don't know exacly what the status of the drivers is like, but i'd assume that the pinephone doesn't support vulkan.

But i've heard that AMD and Samsung will collaborate to bring AMD RDNA2 GPU's to Samsung devices, which in my opinion, it's the game changer that we need. This is completely theoretical but we lose nothing by speculating.

So AMD is great on x86 right? you have very powerful graphic cards compared to intel's which have open source drivers and implementations like intel, namely MESA with RADV, unlike Nvidia, a company that offers very powerful cards with closed source drivers.

I'd assume that these new devices will be able to run a full GNU/Linux distro with open source drivers and all the subsequent tools. You would get finally a powerful device withouth compromising privacy from the software perspective.

I understand that the kill switches are something unique that gives the Librem 5 and the Pinephone an advantage in terms of privacy, but using a real GNU/LInux distribution on a powerful and potentially popular device is a big deal.

What are your thoughts on this?

So i've been playing some old RPG's, the First one was Final Fantasy 6 which i disliked, then i played Star Ocean, which i liked a lot, and now i've finished Breath of Fire.

First i must say that this game is old, and it feels old, very old. It feels like a game that is aware of being in a more powerful console than the 8 bits NES, yet it still doesn't konw what a modern game is.

First problem, there's no fast walk at all, you only have a slow walking speed. Over time you get used to it, but it's frustrating noneteless.

The map, the world in general is quite massive in terms of space, with that walking speed it takes time to reach any place, eventually you get a spell that transports you to almost all towns, but that only makes the experience bearable.

Well heres the tip, the map is divided in large yet isolated areas, and each area has at most 5 places to go. Yep, the map is for the most part, quite empty but at first it gives an entirely different impression.

Another problem is NPCs and the events. The NPCs have this problem that, when a plot event is triggered they only say what they have to say once, just once, oh you forgot what it was? get fucked.

My last complaint is the interface, is quite chaotic, i don't want to dive further into it, let's just say that most of the options exist, you just need to explore it. The spells UI is the worst part of all, you get many spells but not an option that explains what they do, their names don't help at all.

Many old games have these types of problems, the difference between them and Breath of Fire is that Breath of Fire is a very ambicious game, you feel the impact of these problems much more than with other games.

So after this session of complainig, the remaining question is, is this game worth at all?

My personal response would be. YES, totally.

First there is a GBA version that fixes the slow walking speed problem, unfortunately the music is worse considering that the GBA has worse hardware in that matter.

So let's talk about the good points.

The combat system is AMAZING, it's just entertaining and interesting to play, especially compared to Final Fantasy 6. There is much more strategy than FF6 althought the game is not that complex in terms of gameplay. The game is not easy, it has a moderate difficulty, it never resorts to overgrind in order to present a challenge, it's a fair game with a fair challenge, and i like it that way.

The music is very good, unfortunately the last tracks are kinda generic, so it kinda falls short at the last quarter of the experience. Regardless of that, most of the overworld themes, the village theme, the shop theme and many others are nice as hell, it immerses you in the environment.

The story is very entertaining and i actually cared. It's not nearly as good as FFVI but it has its own charm.

Graphically this game is excellent, despite not showing as many large elements as FFVI, many places share a similar structure althought the desing is different. The enemy desings and the characther desings are fantastic.

So to summarize. Graphics: 8.7

Battle System: 9.2

Story: 6.7

Music: 8.1

Gameplay/game design: 5.4

So this game is a solid 7.62, a good game indeed.

isn't it two waifus with swords as the next DLC for Smash Ultimate?

As a Shulk main i cannot be more satisfied with this decision. I've noticed that Pyra has the killpower so she might be like the finisher or edgeguarder/ledgetrapper, while Mythra has the framedata while keeping the range, so she could be good for neutral and combos.

I expect them to be top tier, not less, and to be bad online like Shulk is.

Predictions?

I think Sora is not gonna make it, two square enix characters in a row doesn't seem to be appropriate and Disney is an annoying diva.

Master chief is a slippery pick, that would conform 3 Microsoft characters, but on the other hand the new halo is approaching.

I played the game and these are my thoughts.

Story is fantastic... For like 7 characters, the other ones are not that relevant.

Music 10 out of 10.

Graphics amazing, yeah, play your games with scalines or CRT effects if you're using emulators.

And then the gameplay is like 3.5 out of 10, for many many reasons.

First, the game isn't hard but they force you to overgrind. Since the game introduces so many characters and it wants to give all of them espers (what gives most of them magic) you have to grind each of the 14 characters. You get some of them very late and that's something...

Well after that you'll realize that most of the magic is useless, it doesn't affect the bosses and the normal enemies die faster with normal attacks or the elemental magic.

The combat system is boring and frustrating, and that's surprising considering that the game is easy. Some fights can last up to 1.5 minutes, and that doesn't look like much, but then you find the worst thing about the game.

The random encounter enemy rate is ridiculously high, like mercilessly high, sometimes after ending a battle you will encounter an enemy after TWO steps.

You cannot disable the random enemy encounter till the end of the game when you obtain molulus charm.

And therefore if you want to explore throughout the game, it's gonna be hell.

I wanted to play other final fantasy games, after finishing this one i decided to play star ocean for the snes and breath of fire, and God that's an improvement.