Is Dragon Quest VII Too Easy? Is Nioh 3 Too Hard?

Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined makes one of the longest, most ambitious RPGs into something more manageable: a swashbuckling sprint through a book of fractured fairy tales. Whether or not you like that change of temp likely depends on your history with the series. Meanwhile, Nioh 3’s first boss is the skill check from hell. Why would game designers build a wall between the player and the fun?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  This is the one with the crystals and the dragons.

• 0:03Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 0:03Russ Frushtick?

  It's not.

• 0:04Griffin McElroy?

  So sometimes there's orbs.

• 0:07Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 0:08Griffin McElroy?

  Eleven's got.

• 0:09Russ Frushtick?

  Does, do, do any of the orbs have points? Cause if they have points, that's basically a crystal.

• 0:13Griffin McElroy?

  No, they're usually pretty smooth.

• 0:14Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 0:15Griffin McElroy?

  Final Fantasy, the crystals are quite jagged.

• 0:17Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 0:18Griffin McElroy?

  I will, I will grant you that. Sometimes they're like, materia, I guess is a perfect, beautiful little sphere that you just wanna pop right in your mouth. And sometimes they're like neat little geometric shapes, like, uh, you know, like, I don't know, elongated, eight-sided die or something like that. But in, in Dragon Quest, it's, we're almost always talking about an orb.

• 0:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 0:37Griffin McElroy?

  And the orb is, you know, prismatic, different colors of the rainbow. And you do need to get all of them, usually to build a bridge to heaven. So you can like, get the sword from God. So that's my mnemonic device.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  I like Dragon Warrior. That game's sick.

• 0:51Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Dragon Quest sucks.

• 0:53Griffin McElroy?

  That's interesting.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  That's really old school. So I only like Dragon Warrior and I actually, the kids that liked Dragon Quest growing up, I thought they were kinda idiots and wimps.

• 1:03Griffin McElroy?

  Juice, the, um, the blonde flower seller from Final Fantasy VII, what's her name?

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Aerith.

• 1:10Russ Frushtick?

  Oh.

• 1:12Griffin McElroy?

  Interesting. Not what I expected.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  I think there was a promotion to get a copy of Dragon Warrior for free when I was a kid. That's the only reason.

• 1:24Griffin McElroy?

  Of course it was. The power gave it away. And second thing.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 1:30Griffin McElroy?

  Knowing that there's gonna have to be like a Wikipedia page explaining this cold open. Oh dude, it's nine layers deep. You gotta know, you gotta know your stuff, gang.

• 1:39Russ Frushtick?

  This is a Super Bowl dip of a cold open for you right here.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  We'll talk about this contextually.

• 1:45Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, well, we're gonna, and if you're intrigued and confused by this cold open, stick around. We'll explain every joke we made along the way.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Also, you're not supposed to be listening to this. This isn't part of the show. Rachel, god damn it.

• 1:57Russ Frushtick?

  Again.

• 1:58Griffin McElroy?

  We keep telling you, please don't.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  We keep telling you, this is not part of it.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  My name is Justin Bacarant. I have the best game of the week.

• 2:23Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Griffin McRoy, and I have the best game of the week.

• 2:26Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plante. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:30Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Ross Rushlick. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Welcome to the besties. It's a video game club, and just by listening, you are a member. This week, we're talking about a freshen, a freshening up of a classic beloved tale, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined? Is that what we're going with?

• 2:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, crushed it.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Reimagined. What's that, Chris Plant?

• 2:57Chris Plante?

  Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is the latest remake of the game. We got one about 10 years ago for the Nintendo EDS, and the original came out in America, which is a twist, because not every Dragon Quest game used to. Dragon Quest, for people who aren't aware, is a fantasy role playing game. Imagine Final Fantasy VII. Well, actually, don't imagine.

• 3:17Griffin McElroy?

  It's not at all. Don't imagine anything you like. Don't imagine something else, please.

• 3:22Chris Plante?

  The opposite of that. Imagine just a really traditional fantasy role playing game, but this time you're on a boat.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Madden 2045.

• 3:30Chris Plante?

  That's exactly what it is.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  That's the exact opposite.

• 3:33Chris Plante?

  Thank you.

• 3:35Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of the besties is sponsored by Lisa. You know, we are starting to get into the cooler months of the year. And you know what I love in the cool months of the year? An incredibly cozy mattress that you can just cozy up into. You got the blankets and everything, and I will speak from experience, but maybe not my experience, because Lisa sent me one of their mattresses. But it was timed as such, where actually my son, who was becoming a toddler and needed like an actual bed, needed a mattress. So we had him use the Lisa mattress, and every time that I get into that bed to read him a story at night, I am incredibly jealous of his mattress,

• 4:19Russ Frushtick?

  because holy cow, that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress by New York Times Wirecutter and is featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner. You can go to lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code besties exclusive to our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code besties for 25% off select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code besties.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past is the full name of-

• 5:00Griffin McElroy?

  That was the 3DS version, yes.

• 5:01Chris Plante?

  The maddening comparison I don't think is entirely wrong here from Justin.

• 5:06Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 5:06Chris Plante?

  In the world of role-playing games, because Dragon Quest, unlike Final Fantasy, it likes to stay very similar game to game to game.

• 5:16Griffin McElroy?

  Beyond just the slimes.

• 5:17Chris Plante?

  It's not taking massive swings every game like Final Fantasy where you don't fully know what it's gonna be. If you've played one Dragon Quest, you have an idea of what the Dragon Quest canon will be.

• 5:28Griffin McElroy?

  Play, play Final Fantasy I and then go play Final Fantasy XVI?

• 5:33Chris Plante?

  Sure.

• 5:33Griffin McElroy?

  Is that the most recent one? Like, it, play, and anywhere in between there, VII, X, XII, like, play any of the other, and it's like, that's a different genre, right? Like, Final Fantasy VII even is, is sort of a steam, steamy, steampunk, apocalyptic kind of fantasy. This is just Dragon Quest, and VII is about as straight over the plate as this series really, really gets.

• 5:59Russ Frushtick?

  Is there a special boy and it's a special day in this game?

• 6:03Griffin McElroy?

  Um, okay, so there's a lot of twists on it.

• 6:05Chris Plante?

  It's Pilchur Day.

• 6:06Griffin McElroy?

  It's Pilchur Day. It is Pilchur Day, a special fish day at Pilchur Bay.

• 6:10Chris Plante?

  There's a special Pilchur Fish Day.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  It's Pilchard Day at Pilchard Bay and it's a special Pilchard Day. You gotta wake up early to help your Pilchard Pa bring his special Pilchard sandwiches for your Ma or your Pa before he set sail to collect all the delicious Pilchards.

• 6:25Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I think the closest thing you get to like a destiny connection is that you're friends with a prince who is the biggest dipshit in gaming history.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there's Galhorn is it?

• 6:38Griffin McElroy?

  Galhorn is also, yeah, you can find Galhorn.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Huge destiny connection.

• 6:42Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, can I try and set up kinda what Dragon Warrior 7 was? And so when it came to the stage, it was Dragon Warrior 7 and uh, this is a JRPG franchise and I mean, most of the games are pretty beefy. Um, they, and, and like you said, like it is very, very, very traditional JRPG stuff because in a lot of ways Dragon Quest I like invented those traditions and so it has stuck pretty close to that. Uh, you're gonna see slimes, you're gonna see turn-based combat and leveling up. You're gonna, if you stick with it, I would say to about the 10 to 12 hour mark, you will finally unlock classes.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 7:17Griffin McElroy?

  Um, there is a class system in the game that is actually pretty sick. Uh, it's, it's pretty great and it's had some changes uh, for, for this remake where you can have two classes equipped at the same time, which uh, sort of opens things up to make progression much, much, much faster. Um, but aside from that, like very traditional turn-based combat, not many surprises there. I think the surprising thing about this game is its structure, which is very uh, anthological. I don't know if that's a word.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 7:45Griffin McElroy?

  Um, you are, you are friends with this prince.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Wow, what is the word?

• 7:51Griffin McElroy?

  Anthological feels right to me, right?

• 7:53Speaker 02

  I like it.

• 7:54Griffin McElroy?

  You're a little boy from a, a poor fishing village who's friends with a dipshit prince and the da, the mayor's daughter finds out you two are on adventures, goes with you and you start to put together these, these tablets that let you travel into the past to these islands that have been lost in time. You go back and you'll do a little, a little quest. You'll do a little quest in the past. You'll help somebody out. You'll do about 40 to 50 turn-based battles and you'll level up and you'll find some stuff and then you'll come back to the present and poof, that island has reopened. And now there's stuff to do there, too. And then you go right back to the Shrine of Mysteries, my friend, and it's on to the next tablet and the next island of the past. You're gonna save somebody there and fix it and you come back to the present, poof, there's a new one. That is, it is just a sort of bunch of short stories.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 8:38Griffin McElroy?

  That you are really cranking through.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  You really don't.

• 8:42Griffin McElroy?

  Couple hours each.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  So I'm not big into these kinds of games, but because of our B segment game, I decided to play this game some. And, uh, I, I, you really, a lot of, a lot of games that have this sort of like length. It feels like that because the first three fucking hours are you listening to two old princes talk about? How the Dragon King is almost dead.

• 9:04Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  But the unicorn lands, you know what I mean? It's like, fucking bring your dad a sandwich and then your dad's like, there's some tablets, will you go look at them or whatever? And like the, the, the episode, it is like a very logical, sort of like small, low stakes thing, but it's easy to follow. You're not being asked to read a thousand lines of dialogue, but it's just like, and it, and it, and it feels very digestible. Like I played about five hours of this and I didn't feel like, well, when is it gonna start or whatever? I had a beautifully pleasant cohesive experience, you know? It didn't feel like I had just gotten a glimpse of the shape of the maybe thing.

• 9:44Griffin McElroy?

  That is a new feature for this reimagined version of the game. Dragon Warrior seven famously, you would not engage any turn-based battle for the first three hours of the game. Maybe as you are, because the things that you do, bringing a sandwich to your dad and then going to meet your dipshit prince friend to put together this tablet to travel into the past, that's about like, that is hours and hours of the PlayStation original that you get through very, very quickly. They have streamlined so much of the stuff, more than even the 3DS version did, which already streamlined some of this stuff. This is, uh, by comparison, people who play this and think it's slow might disagree, but like a, it moves at a fucking trot.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  So is that them cutting stuff from the original game or is that them increasing the game speed?

• 10:30Griffin McElroy?

  Partially, but partially it's stuff like instead. Instead of going here and talking to your uncle and then he has you go off and do these nine things. He just gives you one of the things that you should have gone hunting for in the past. It's stuff like that where it's just like getting rid of backtracking and like.

• 10:45Chris Plante?

  They've added a lot of quality of life stuff too. There's a lot more waypoint marking of things where if you need to find things like these tablets that send you into the past. You have to collect a series of them and now you can just find them on the map.

• 10:59Griffin McElroy?

  See them on the map.

• 11:00Chris Plante?

  Yes. Versus like, oh, I am going to have to go into every room and every house and break every single jar. Because there might be a tablet in them or I have to talk to every single person. Cause there might be a person to chat with.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  It feels fun in a cheaty, not cheaty, but like it just sort of like getting good stuff constantly. Like you definitely, it feels like you're just kind of like, people are just tossing the stuff you need at you. It's, it feels very low, low friction is what I would say. They want you to keep going.

• 11:28Chris Plante?

  Yeah. I mean, that's what I've been surprised by kind of the reaction to this because a lot of hardcore Dragon Quest fans who played through the original and played through the remake, I'm seeing gripes of, oh, you've, you've honed it into nothingness. That the game now plays itself, that the pleasure of these RPGs was that you did talk to everybody. And like finding out where to go was the fun. What's strange to me and Griffin, I'm curious where your head is at on this.

• 11:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 11:56Chris Plante?

  I also hear from Dragon Quest fans that the, the appeal is that it is relatively straightforward. That you don't have to think when playing these games, that it is comfort food. I think I've read a million pieces about how.

• 12:08Griffin McElroy?

  A million people tell you comfort, yeah.

• 12:09Chris Plante?

  It's comfort food, right? So it's like, I don't know which one they, people want it to be. And I'm curious for you, like, did it lose something by trimming this down?

• 12:16Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think so. I, I, I, uh, I have played through every mainline Dragon Quest game, except for the online.

• 12:23Chris Plante?

  Ten.

• 12:23Griffin McElroy?

  One, because I, yeah, 10, I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

• 12:27Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Griffin McElroy?

  Pretty curious about it. And seven, like it earns its reputation for being pretty, I, pretty hostile, I think, to your time. And just a lot, a lot, a lot of unnecessary backtracking and hunting down these fragments. If you miss one, then like, you're going to spend a long fucking time trying to figure out where you didn't pick up this one of many, many dozens of plot, like important kind of items that you're supposed to be like. I feel like there is, I don't want to disqualify anyone's comments or say that they're like bullshit or whatever, but like I, I, I think that looking back at Dragon Warrior VII on the PlayStation One,

• 13:08Griffin McElroy?

  when it came to the States and saying like, what was good about it is how, uh, how hostile it was, or how, um, unapproachable it was, or anything like that, like, I don't know. For me, that game has a lot of other cool shit. Like, the class system is really neat. And once you get into that, like, all of a sudden, there's quite a bit more depth to the combat system. The characters, the charm of this game is like through the fucking roof. The localization is, is great, especially in this remastered version. It looks so good. What was that old, uh, show that like Team America World Police made fun of?

• 13:40Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, Thunderbirds?

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Thunderbirds go.

• 13:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, man, it looks awesome. It looks so cool.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  It looks like dioramas with like marionette puppet characters, or even, I think it's like-

• 13:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, Jerry-

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Old guides, like a video game guide come to life.

• 13:54Griffin McElroy?

  It really does. Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. So like-

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Jerry Anderson's.

• 13:57Griffin McElroy?

  Jerry Anderson. There's a ton of stuff about this game that I think is, is really good. And for me, Dragon Quest XI is still the like, I think cleanest way to get into the, it was the first game I played. Uh, I still think it's like the most approachable because, while this does trim off a tremendous amount of like unnecessary stuff that kind of got in the way of the original version and the 3DS version, there's some stuff about it that is still pretty antiquated. Um, and they haven't touched that stuff.

• 14:26Russ Frushtick?

  Like what?

• 14:26Griffin McElroy?

  To me, it feels, uh, I mean, God, I don't know, the fact that in order to save, you have to go to a church and talk to a guy and he gives you a long, unskippable sort of like dialogue thing.

• 14:37Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, that's all true to life, so if you're-

• 14:39Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, I mean, that's true. I guess that is-

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. That's not just the, the church guy actually kind of, that's fine. It's a statue that wants to talk to you. That's a bit much for me. You know what I'm here for. Refill the life, refill the mana. I don't have multiple saves. This isn't a branching story. I'm not going to backtrack here.

• 14:54Griffin McElroy?

  The game does auto-save, so like a lot of that stuff is, is, uh, I don't know. I still felt like I needed to save every time I could, but that was losing muscle memory from the like 120 hours I spent playing this shit on my-

• 15:05Speaker 02

  This is not a, I'm not gonna complain about this because like I said, I think this is all by the charm. But I think to be really clear about it, if you are used to more modern, there is not much in the way of modernization that's happened with like the gameplay systems. Like I think a lot of turn-based stuff have found ways of making combat more active. Um, you know, even in, in giving you opportunities to like, reduce some damage with a counter button or something like that. Something to like bring you into battles a little bit more. This is very much like, it, it feels designed to put on autopilot. It's very easy to start auto battling. You can actually set up like tactics for what kind of auto fighting you want your characters to do.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Like it feels very much intended for that to be, this is not like a, a super engaging like gameplay experience. If that's something you're looking for.

• 15:56Russ Frushtick?

  I will say this, on the auto battling side, that stuff actually makes me incredibly encouraged.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I liked it. No, sorry. Thumbs up for me. Huge, huge, huge plus, but it is, it is not an update. It is an acknowledgement that some of this is like not super engaging.

• 16:13Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, the, the depth of it comes from the preparation for those battles, right? Like the class, the class system has, uh, like there's basic classes you, you learn. And once you learn a couple of those, you can move on to an advanced class. And then those like give you different spells and affect your stats in like a bunch of different ways. And, uh, being able to mix and match those is, it opens up a lot of doors. But then like, yeah, once you're in the fight, you can, it is a dragon quest thing to just turn on auto battle and press the fast forward button and roll the dice and see where they land and hope that you've, uh, you've prepared enough.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is funny. As you progress through, if you're just auto battling the whole time, it will, it's just this thing of like, wow, this is, seems super easy. I'm just kind of churning through these and then you'll watch this battle start to break bad in a way that like, I don't really know how to help you guys. I haven't been playing the whole time. Wow. You guys are really getting your asses kicked, huh? Ah, dang, never. This fell apart fast. I wish I'd done, I should have done something. I should have stopped this. I was watching it unfold.

• 17:12Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I, I think it's different than like, uh, the most recent Like a Dragon, which was turn-based, or Metaphor, or Fantasio, in that it felt to me more like an idle game meets a visual novel, in that I, I, yes, all of the strategizing that Griffin talks about is there. I didn't need to use any of that. I put the battle speed on ultra-fast, I put auto-battle on, you get to a point where you are so above enemies that you can just slice them before you even get into a battle, and you don't even have to have the battle.

• 17:44Griffin McElroy?

  Love that shit. Oh, god, I love that shit.

• 17:46Chris Plante?

  Right? And it's just a matter of watching my numbers go up while I get these like, great, somewhere between like, Outer Limits and O. Henry stories.

• 17:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. No random encounters either. No random encounters, you see the people, you see the enemies on the map. So you can choose when to...

• 18:00Speaker 02

  And you can spin around them.

• 18:01Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah, it ain't, it ain't hard. There's, there's some difficulty settings that I really appreciate, like, and if you don't want to make battles easier for yourself, or you don't want to affect like, the stats of it, you can increase how much experience, or gold, or occupation, vocation points, I forget what they're called. Uh, you can boost those, so you just don't have to grind as much, and then you'll be over-leveled, and you'll get into a dungeon and be like, I'm not gonna fight everybody in here. I don't actually, I don't actually need to. You can really take this game at whatever pace you want, and I think it is, on, I think it's the best version of this game. I, I, I love this series, and I love the original game, but like, this stuff that, that made it slow was bad. I, I don't, I don't have much affection for,

• 18:43Griffin McElroy?

  for that, I don't know, that stuff. Maybe I would if I had played it, you know, on the original PS1, and, and had that experience in its sort of intended format.

• 18:52Russ Frushtick?

  Can I, can I ask a question as someone who did not, intentionally did not play this game? Because we've, historically, I have really, uh, jibed with very few JRPGs in the past?

• 19:03Russ Frushtick?

  Don't you think it's a bit of a sign that something is off with the genre when you, when expediting elements of the genre?

• 19:15Russ Frushtick?

  Makes the game better.

• 19:16Chris Plante?

  I see, I see what you mean. And then somebody who was turned around on this genre a ton over the last few years is yes, a long time ago, it needed more honing and it has since been honed. And that's why when I play Metaphorie Fantasia, where I play like a dragon, I do not skip the combat.

• 19:34Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean, for I those games in particular, I think are representative of like a more modern approach. So I do agree with that, but like, I mean, there's still.

• 19:43Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, it's, it is as old fashioned as Dragon Quest 11 is still pretty traditional. Like there's no extra turn system from Metaphor Refontazio. There's no parry system from Expedition 33, right? That, but that is the stuff that if they would add it to this game.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  It would no longer be.

• 20:00Griffin McElroy?

  It would no longer be Dragon Quest.

• 20:01Russ Frushtick?

  No, I understand that. I guess the question I would have is would Dragon Quest 11 be improved if all of these features that we just talked about were also ported to like other Dragon Quest games?

• 20:10Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think so. And I'll tell you, and I'll tell you why. It's because these are big games and they are big stories. Dragon Quest 7 especially. And I don't think the number of turn-based battles you would get into would be, would make it a even remotely palatable experience if you had to put a little bit more time and energy into each and every fight. Right? Like, I, I don't, this game has so many scenes and so many settings and so many stories and chapters that it is moving through. If you did not play it fast forwarding the combat on auto, and I'm not saying that obviously everyone does it that way.

• 20:50Griffin McElroy?

  I'm speaking personally. The idea of doing all those battles and having to actually spend some, some brain juice on them. It doesn't, just doesn't sound great. So.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  It's, you gotta, you gotta also think about it in the context of like. Just being gameplay, just being one of the other things that is on offer, especially with a package like this, right? You're talking about the, the, you're paying for the fidelity of having this like nostalgic experience like recreated for you in a way that makes it like super engaging. But like, if you had a story in a game that you weren't particularly like needing to, you wanted to get the sense of, but you didn't necessarily need to like read every single side story and every single line. No one would think twice about kind of like tapping through that dialogue and getting a sense of it, right? And that's about what I'm doing with the story here, right? It's like, that's cute. I'm kind of like, basically got a sense of it, but it's beautiful to look at and engage with it.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  So relaxing. And I feel like if it forced me to slow down and do like be very specific about the mechanics, it would be almost a betrayal of that, right? Because what, what I'm getting out of it is that it's so sort of like light and airy. I'm able to kind of like get a sense of this, what this experience is without like sinking a hundred hours of my full focus into it.

• 22:10Russ Frushtick?

  I get that. A, a, a final question for me. If you could wave a magic wand and apply all of these speed up, auto battle, et cetera features to older JRPGs, Final Fantasy across the board, do you think that's a net positive? Or are there specific ones where you think it would actually detract?

• 22:29Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I mean, I think overall it would be a net positive. I also feel like in my gut, a game like Final Fantasy VI is not as, uh, is not quite as long as a Dragon Quest is. Like you are doing sort of some total fewer kind of, uh, random encounters overall. But Final Fantasy VI, to use that as an example, when you use the blitz combo, I mean, and you have to punch in the actual command, like you're playing Street Fighter, or, uh, you're controlling Cyan and you have to wait for the meter to like Dragon Quest Undo. Any of that shit, man. The newest like gameplay thing that they have is each class has like a special ability that charges up, uh, that are actually kind of cool. Like

• 23:12Griffin McElroy?

  obviously that is well trod territory, but like it's kind of, the special abilities are, are, are pretty neat and pretty good reasons for you to consider using classes that otherwise are not so great. Um, but again, that goes back to the thing of like, it's all the prep. It's all the getting stronger. It's all the finding the stuff and exploring so that when you go and you look at these very fast, very low input battles and they start moving that a nice clip, you're like, hell yeah, I'm doing the other part of the game super.

• 23:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah. That feels good. I like that.

• 23:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I, I think this is, I think this rules. I think this game is great and I think it is the best version of a, of a, a game that is obviously very, very nostalgic, but also like, I don't know, just a really very solid entry. Not, not, not my favorite in the Dragon Quest series, but like.

• 24:00Chris Plante?

  But because of its story, you can pick at it over the course of like years. I absolutely you can.

• 24:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Like a bonsai tree.

• 24:08Chris Plante?

  Like a bonsai tree.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Let's take a break and then when we come back, let's talk about, uh, a much less relaxing and accommodating experience.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Neo 3.

• 24:23Chris Plante?

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• 25:08Chris Plante?

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• 25:51Chris Plante?

  That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 25:58Russ Frushtick?

  Now, we all know that I'm great at video games. We'll start that segment there. I'm really, I play all the hardest ones and I do so.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Play all the hardest ones and lots of his time, like lots of his time that he could have spent on anything.

• 26:11Russ Frushtick?

  Anything else.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Spends it on these games.

• 26:12Russ Frushtick?

  Carving I could have been doing, but instead I play hard games.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:16Russ Frushtick?

  I will say, without hyperbole, that Neo 3's very first boss that you fight is harder than anything that I played in Silksong. Anything, not even close.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Now, do you mean that in a fun way?

• 26:34Russ Frushtick?

  I do not.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  But Russ, I'm confused because you, as you say to me all the time, even when I beg you to stop, you love it rough. So what was it about this game?

• 26:51Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, let me, let me take a step.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  If I could just echo Russ, ditto, 100%, but I suck. So like, I get frustrated easy.

• 27:00Russ Frushtick?

  I got other stuff going on. Someone who's legit before.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  I got other things in my life.

• 27:04Russ Frushtick?

  Let me take a step back real quick. So the Neo franchise has existed for a while now. It comes from the Team Ninja team. Kohei Tecmo makes these games. They are Souls-like games, but Neo 1 and Neo 2 notably are relatively linear. Linear in the way that like Demon Souls was linear. Like it'll have environment, like level. Former levels rather than like a big open world that

• 27:26Speaker 02

  They feel a bit more action oriented, I would say.

• 27:29Griffin McElroy?

  A little bit more, yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, less, less about the exploring and shortcuts and all that.

• 27:33Russ Frushtick?

  It feels like a platinum game in terms of the combat, much faster than anything you would see in like a Dark Souls or anything like that. Very

• 27:41Griffin McElroy?

  I would argue it feels like a Team Ninja game.

• 27:43Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, Team Ninja, but good. That's a

• 27:45Griffin McElroy?

  That's just, that's just me.

• 27:46Russ Frushtick?

  Cause they made it. But also, if you've played any of their games, very similar. This is notably the first time that they are bringing the open world format to the Neo franchise. The developers actually messed with this before they made Path of the Ronin. Was that the name of that game?

• 28:02Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:04Russ Frushtick?

  That was the one, it just came out like three years ago, two, three years ago, where you could like glide around the world.

• 28:09Griffin McElroy?

  They've made so many games in the past few years, yes. War Long, Fallen Dynasty, yes.

• 28:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they've made a lot of games, but this one is the first time they're bringing

• 28:18Griffin McElroy?

  Rise of the Roden.

• 28:19Russ Frushtick?

  Rise of the Ronin, thank you.

• 28:20Griffin McElroy?

  I couldn't find the verb.

• 28:21Russ Frushtick?

  Pretty

• 28:22Griffin McElroy?

  I searched a lot of different verbs of the Ronin.

• 28:25Russ Frushtick?

  This is the first time that they've brought open world to the mix, which actually got me really excited because I thought that Elden Ring, by introducing an open world format in ways that were much more dramatic than Dark Souls one and two, and three for that matter, made the games more approachable. Because you can really figure out the best way to approach something. Oh, I'm struggling on this boss. I'm going to go to a different boss or find new gear or whatever. So I was excited about Neo three, maybe introducing that to a franchise that I hadn't really clicked with yet.

• 28:59Russ Frushtick?

  That's all the setup. Here's the, here's the kicker. So they, they put you through a tutorial and they teach you the mechanics and the mechanics, they do some interesting things. Justin, I don't know if there was anything in particular that you thought was interesting. I thought the switching thing where you're switching between Samurai and Ninja. Pretty cool.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's it's tough to contextualize it because we only made it as far as I made it, but the it very quickly introduces you to two combat styles, one of which is Samurai, where there's a sort of like moment that you can restore your stamina after a series of attacks. You're sort of like, if you combo a sort of like breath in, you can like, keep your stamina a little bit better. And then the ninja, you can add on to the end of a combo like a teleport away. So like, if you press attack several times, you can kind of shadow step rather than like actually dodge. And it's like part of the flow of the combat. So they both feel pretty different pretty quickly. Samurai is like more, you know, uh, combat full on, and then the ninja is a bit more.

• 30:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, but you are specifically switching between them instantly. There's just like, you pull a trigger and boom, you're the other character. In fact, it's actually tied into the like parry system of the game, where the way you parry is by switching as you're being attacked by a heavy attack, you like that activates the parry mechanic.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Okay, that's interesting. Like that super parry.

• 30:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  For the super unblockable thing, you have to switch forms. And that's like, yeah.

• 30:26Russ Frushtick?

  So neat idea. Um, okay, so we go, Justin and I, again, had the same experience. We go through the tutorial at the end, presumably at the end of the tutorial.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  You can try, but there's like 10 weapons. So there's like, you can try, it doesn't like give you something. It's like, get started with this. It's like, there's a, I mean, I really, I between like the bonus stuff that I had like 20 weapons.

• 30:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  The first boss, like I added every weapon, not a problem.

• 30:52Russ Frushtick?

  Um, the first boss is a guy with a big stick, and there's a point at the end of it. And man, is he mean.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Shoo, this guy is mean.

• 31:03Russ Frushtick?

  You get about

• 31:04Speaker 02

  And boy, does he hate you.

• 31:05Russ Frushtick?

  Two and a half hits, I would say, before you're dead. Uh, and you have three.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Not an exaggeration. Three, three hit.

• 31:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, but basically three hits, maybe two and a half. Depends on where you're at. And you have three heals, and the heals will like mostly heal you fully, but that's it.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  And two, two blocks will clear your stamina. So like, you could block twice, and then you had, and then you are completely vulnerable. Every combo, like, most of his combos are like four hits. So like, you can't block.

• 31:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Uh, and there is a dodge.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  So you can dodge away, but it's really.

• 31:40Russ Frushtick?

  Not recommended.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  It's not recommended. And also, but here's the thing that really sucks. It's not that hard to not get hit by the guy. You can keep your distance from the guy. Really easy.

• 31:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, the way damage works in this game is you have to basically whittle down the guy's stamina. They have a name for it in the game, but it's basically stamina.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Key, right?

• 32:00Russ Frushtick?

  Key until the key is low enough and then you can deal damage to him. But what you're dealing to him is like, basically what looks like chip damage. Like here's 2% of his health off. Congratulations. Do it again 50 more times. Now, there are ways to combo where you're, where you're interrupting one of his heavy attacks. But you better not fuck up that timing because if you fuck up that timing, you're basically dead. And there's very, very little room for error. And it's when you're succeeding, it's just a very slow plotting process.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  It's triage. It feels like not, uh, not triage.

• 32:40Russ Frushtick?

  It feels like.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  I'm watching, I'm watching a video of this fight and it does.

• 32:43Russ Frushtick?

  There's a YouTube video that, cause I looked up guides. You know how I feel about guides. We all do. I looked up guides for this fight specifically that was like, easy way to beat this guy. And the easy way to beat this guy is spend 15 minutes being perfect, fighting this guy. Is basically what it boils down to.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  I, it is. If you think about the early stages of a game, and I think that you have to, right? Games are, every game is educational, right? Because that's what's fun about games is the learning that your brain does when you figure out a mechanic. Your brain likes that, right? So the, the game is always teaching you and this, what this game is teaching you in the early moments is, here's how I want you to approach bosses. I want you to approach them by figuring out the exact thing that I want you to do. And then be very deliberate about that and then execute it perfectly. And it won't be pleasant. And that's what it's teaching you about Neo 3, right? So even if you engage it, like take it at face value, it is like.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  So it is telling you that it is going to be unpleasant.

• 33:51Russ Frushtick?

  Now, but here's the issue. And here's why I think it's interesting that they've made this choice about the first boss. Because once you get through the tutorial and the game opens up, what I've heard from people that have played much further than us is the game gives you tools to make boss fights way more of an intimate, personalized experience because you're using this skill to parry or this weapon to whatever, you're earning skills that like allow you to focus how you're playing, which I find incredibly compelling about FromSoft games, for example, is being able to customize that experience. Because this is so early, your only option for a customization, there's a couple options. You could summon a guy.

• 34:35Russ Frushtick?

  There is a guy, an NPC you can summon. You have a limited number of resources to summon that guy. And when you run out, there's no more of those. Also, the guy does no damage and barely attends his, his attention while you're doing the fight. The other option that I've heard online is-

• 34:50Speaker 02

  You still get combo, like you could bring someone else, right? Which I did, I just used the resource, not really knowing like, I got, I got killed by the guy so badly that I assumed I was supposed to bring in somebody. And I brought in somebody and I used up the, the resource and it didn't help. And if he turns his attention on you, which he instantly does, still three hits and you're dead. I mean, does it?

• 35:09Russ Frushtick?

  The other option that I've heard online through digging through like Neo reddits is you should turn around and just start slaughtering like little soldier guys that are kind of in the area and just grind out souls for two hours until you're a high enough level that the fight is decent. And that fucking sucks, guys. Like, that's terrible.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, and I, by the way, I would have no idea about how I would level up in a way that would be meaningful, right? So I would definitely need to go like look up a guide for the best way to level up, to exploit, because that's what they want. And, and what it's hard is it just feels like trying to make a segment of a game, like- It is not intended for people. Here's why I can't say authoritatively. It is not for people that didn't play Neo 1 and Neo 2. I hope it's for people that did.

• 35:56Russ Frushtick?

  Even people that played Neo 1 and Neo 2, I was looking on the Reddit, the Neo Reddit, if ever there was a place where people would go. And people were saying, holy shit, this is dramatically harder than anything I've experienced.

• 36:09Griffin McElroy?

  What I'm struggling with looking at this fight, one of my favorite games ever is Sekiro. And the way you described the combat system, the boss fight system, like it sounded similar, right? In Sekiro, you have a certain number of death blows that you have to get off on an enemy. And to do that, you have to break their stamina, either through like well timed guards or attacks or, you know, any, any number of basic kind of sword fight dueling activities. And here, it really seems a lot less, I mean, Sekiro, you really had to wail on some people to break their stamina. Bushido blade, it wasn't. But when you break someone in, in this fight that I'm watching, you get to deal a little bit of more damage than you normally do.

• 36:54Griffin McElroy?

  And then it's back to the grind. So it feels like the tempo is, um, the tempo is very dramatically different.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  It is just not like the, the, the rhythm isn't fun, right? Like that's, it's, it's not even like a difficulty thing because once you understand what they want you to do, it's still unpleasant to execute.

• 37:11Griffin McElroy?

  Like, yes.

• 37:12Chris Plante?

  I, I think this is a big question I have about the Souls like genre right now, which is this, the skill check boss fight. It feels antiquated in some ways as these games get easier and they give you more and more options, which apparently this game does a lot. As you mentioned, I read the Kotaku review and from what I understand, it's these four big open worlds and you get a ton of new abilities and power ups and advanced weapons that make the game easier and easier and easier. But just like this developer's previous game, Will Longfall and Dynasty, it has this skill check that's like, well, we want to make sure that you're good enough to play the rest of the game. That you're going to be, that you won't be overwhelmed.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Ironically, we are testing the maximum of what you're going to face before you even get to that, though. And that just seems, I don't, I don't, I get why it was there with the original Souls games. I don't fully understand why we still have this.

• 38:12Russ Frushtick?

  Here's the thing, it's not there in the original Souls games, because if you look at Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 1 begins, you know, you go through the tutorial,

• 38:19Speaker 02

  The asylum demon.

• 38:20Russ Frushtick?

  You die, whatever, you die to the asylum demon, that's fine. And then eventually, you go to Undeadberg, and the first like quote unquote true boss that you're fighting is, what's his name, on the bridge, whoever that guy is, the big guy on the bridge.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  I'll never ever remember his name in a million years.

• 38:36Russ Frushtick?

  But you have an entire level before that, where you're like, doing things and finding things and finding gear to determine what you're going to be able to do. And there's different options. So without that here, because you're locked into the tutorial, it just doesn't have any options.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Bloodborne's first boss is a good example of this, where like, Bloodborne's first boss, you have to beat them before you can start leveling. So it's this thing of like, it's this mental thing. But what Bloodborne is teaching you there is that it is scary, right? Bloodborne is high stakes, because this doesn't even have that drama. You instantly get your souls back or whatever when you walk back into it. It's not like a, there's no tension. It's just frustration.

• 39:16Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All I'm gonna say is this, is this, for me personally, this is not me saying Neo 3 is a bad game. What it is me saying is Neo 3 developers made a very, very bad decision for the beginning of their expansive giant open world game that otherwise, according to reviews, seems to be pretty fucking good. So I hope for their sake, and other people's sake, people that buy it, that they think about patching it. Because that's a lot of fucking effort you guys spent making this awesome game, to have it gated behind what is a pretty miserable experience. And for people listening that make games as well, like, it's okay, you don't need

• 39:58Russ Frushtick?

  to throw people in the deep end early on. In fact, I'd recommend the opposite. Make them feel pretty good about your game before you make them die a bunch of times, and maybe they'll keep playing.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  I don't even mind if you want me to grind. I don't even mind the skill test, but if you're gonna do the skill test, make it one weapon and one boss and make sure that I understand your counter system, right?

• 40:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Make sure you're teaching me something with it. This gives you every tool, like, and that's just more frustrating. I'll just switch between the weapons and keep getting my ass handed to me. And that's the lesson that the game wants me to take away from it. It's not like, feel free to experiment. What it mean, what the lesson is, get on YouTube and fucking find the one tutorial that'll teach you how to beat this guy. And even then, it's too annoying to actually do. You'll just quit.

• 40:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Anyway, that's Neo 3. For people that do get into it, if a game gets patched and that becomes easier, let us know. I'd be happy to try it again.

• 40:51Chris Plante?

  Yeah. I don't know that I will.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  I'll be happy to hear Russ try it again.

• 40:55Chris Plante?

  Neo has always been this franchise where I'm like, I like fucking everything about this. All these different ingredients they've mixed it and I've just have never, I just have never really gotten stuck in one.

• 41:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I like, I liked Rise of the Ronin and that game actually has difficulty settings. So if you're interested in this kind of game from this developer, play that.

• 41:15Chris Plante?

  They make good games. Woollong, good. Rise of the Ronin, good. Fatal Frame 2 coming out this year, good. Looks like they also made another Dead or Alive extreme dating game. Haven't had a chance to play that one yet, only released in Asia, but you know, I'm gonna figure out how to download it. I'm just curious.

• 41:33Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, cool. Okay, well, we have some reader mail very quickly from some folks specifically talking about Cairn, which is exciting. We talked about Cairn last week, that was the mountain climbing game. This first letter comes from Arian. Arian says, rock climber here. While I've spent a far more time in the gym than on crags, I've met many folks who do both. And I must say that being an asshole is not an accepted part of the sport. Yes, there are people who think that being a highly skilled climber excuses any terrible behavior, but there are far more amazing climbers who are the nicest folks in the world. At the gym, advanced climbers will be the first to cheer on a new climber when they achieve their first send, because we all know how it feels to hit the first wall.

• 42:15Russ Frushtick?

  Love the show and this episode was super fun, but I wanted to share that rock climbers are more often than not a kind and welcoming bunch.

• 42:21Griffin McElroy?

  Did we say that rock climbers were shit?

• 42:22Russ Frushtick?

  I think the person, the character.

• 42:25Griffin McElroy?

  The standoffish nature of the, of the main character of the game. And it's like, well, yeah, because you're out there on the mountains. You're not, I, yeah.

• 42:31Russ Frushtick?

  We also might have alluded to the fact that rock climbers might not care about their loved ones because they think their pastime is more important.

• 42:39Griffin McElroy?

  That is objectively, um, no, yeah, I mean, I think it's, I, I, I know a couple rock climber people and they're always posting pics of them with lots of other rock climber people. And so it's like, obviously they seem, they seem a friendly bunch. I hope I didn't.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  Speaking, I thought this might be a reference to, I came upon in the game bear proof, like snack deposits with some items in them. And I didn't know if I should leave some of the items behind. I've never experienced that in a video game before, but I was seeing like, I guess a normal hiker wouldn't clean this whole box of bear proof stuff out. Like a normal hiker would probably just like take something. But in my video game, I'm like, fuck yeah, clean it up. But then I had a moment where I was like, now wait a minute. Are there other imaginary hikers? Should I leave this behind for them? I don't, I don't know if you guys talked about the bear proof.

• 43:24Russ Frushtick?

  No, we didn't.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  I guess it's not story relevant. I was hoping it would come back up.

• 43:29Griffin McElroy?

  I did have a bear encounter in the game that is pretty great. It's, it's pretty good, the, the bear encounter that I had in the game, but I don't want to spoil it in case.

• 43:37Russ Frushtick?

  He was hungry. He didn't have snacks.

• 43:40Griffin McElroy?

  Another one from Jack?

• 43:42Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, we have another one from Jack, another climber. Uh, Jack mostly just sent a giant, uh, list of terms that we thought would be useful. And I thought, don't look at the document. I can, I ask you guys if you have any thoughts on, what does whipper mean?

• 43:56Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, whipper? That's when you fall a little bit, but you're clipped in and so the, the rope goes.

• 44:02Russ Frushtick?

  Whoa, Griffin.

• 44:04Griffin McElroy?

  Is that right?

• 44:05Russ Frushtick?

  That's right.

• 44:06Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, I just guess it just made sense to me because it's like whipping.

• 44:09Russ Frushtick?

  Secret little, uh, we'll, we'll do one more. What is an Elvis leg?

• 44:13Griffin McElroy?

  An Elvis leg? That's where you have, that's, that's where you have one knee stuck out one way. And the other one is like, is like straight, like he's doing his little dance. He's doing his little Elvis dance.

• 44:26Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, you know, when you have a bad hold in, uh, Karen and your leg starts wiggling like Elvis?

• 44:32Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I see Elvis leg. That's cool. I like that. Yeah.

• 44:36Russ Frushtick?

  Also, also they write to say, piton is the only way, uh, they've ever heard it. Although I guess regionally it could be different. Do we have any honorable mentions?

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Dragon Quest VII is really sort of absorbed my...

• 44:49Russ Frushtick?

  I do want to call out that I've been watching Fallout Season 2, which I think wraps this week. I think the final episode of Season 2 just aired. I am consistently pretty amazed at what they are doing within Fallout as a show. It's the first time that I can remember where the show acknowledges the canon of the games that happened effectively 10 years before the event. I think New Vegas, the game, took place 10 years before the show. And all of the events in New Vegas, all the events in the other Fallout games are referenced and acknowledged in like a accurate, canon-accurate way. And not in like a nerdy like, "Hey, do you remember when there was Operation Alaska?"

• 45:31Russ Frushtick?

  Like, in ways that are like fully baked into the narrative of the show, which is an incredibly tough thing to do. So if you're a Fallout nerd, I mean, it seems likely that if you're a Fallout nerd, you're watching the show. But I think Fallout Season 2 has really leaned even further into that and done actually a really good job.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  I really enjoyed, I know I enjoyed Fallout Season 1. And then Sydney and I both did, right? Because that's her only exposure to Fallout, but she really liked it. And I started Fallout Season 2, and man, there are like so many disparate plot threads that my brain melted. And I don't, I didn't remember any of it. It's like, okay, this is actually, can't keep up.

• 46:10Russ Frushtick?

  Good critique. I agree. The first episode of this season, actually, I think is not great, because they want to like, set up, here's the six threads that we're going to be weaving through the entire series, this season at least. And it's too much. I think they do a much better job, because in later episodes, they'll just focus on like two or three of the storylines. And then they just focus on, so you're not as distracted.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was so like, yeah.

• 46:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you're not the only one that...

• 46:36Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah.

• 46:37Russ Frushtick?

  My mom, for what it's worth, not a gamer, loves spy mysteries, has got into, very into Fallout Season 1, and watched the first episode of Season 2. It was like, I don't like it anymore. And it's like, I think it's worth at least watching two episodes of the second season. I think it'd find its footing.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  I admire her certainty about that. That's, that's really...

• 46:59Russ Frushtick?

  I know. She was very certain.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  It's inspiring.

• 47:02Russ Frushtick?

  I know.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Hey, do you guys, man, I just want to... Talk very briefly about Star Trek, Starfleet Academy, if I can.

• 47:09Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah, please.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Please, because it's like, it's so weird that the show exists. Because this seems like a show that I've, I'm not unique in think, I've been thinking about this show existing for 20 years, right? This is like just a show that everyone kind of figured they would make eventually, right? Like they've done all the other Star Trek things, so they're doing a Starfleet Academy one.

• 47:28Russ Frushtick?

  This is and, and, and I haven't watched any of it, so tell me if this is wrong. My interpretation of it, based on just like brief clips and things like that, is this is like Star Trek meets Skins. Is that a fair assessment?

• 47:41Speaker 02

  So it is, right, so it is way in the future. Very disconnected from like everything that has happened in previous Star Trek stuff, right? I'm, I'm not like, I'm, I've not kept up with the many Paramount. Star Trek series that have been concurrent, I watched some Discovery. I like Star Trek, like as an idea, I've watched a lot of Star Trek stuff. I'm not a big nerd or a dork.

• 48:07Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  No, but, uh, watch the shows, it's fascinating. So here's the basic premise, there's this, uh, a guy named Caleb, who is separated from his, uh, mom when he's just a young boy. Because she is taken into custody basically by Starfleet. Uh, and this boy escapes, uh, from the custody of Starfleet, who is she, he is in the custody of a captain, played by Holly Hunter at that time. And he escapes, fast forward 15 years in the future, this kid is taken back into custody. Uh, for crimes that he's doing, you know, just trying to survive and find his mom who he separated from as a boy. He is taken back into custody and since he is still technically a ward of Starfleet. He is given the opportunity to instead of be imprisoned, he can join Starfleet Academy, a recently renewed.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Refresh Starfleet Academy that they are just starting to do this whole thing again, that is being led by Holly Hunter. Who is the chancellor of the Starfleet Academy now, uh, and the Academy is also a ship that can take off and go to space. Sounds good.

• 49:08Russ Frushtick?

  I like all of that.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  By the way, Paul Giamatti is a bad alien who's super good at fighting and kind of was responsible for this boy getting separated from his mother, but also hates Starfleet and maybe he's looking out for this boy too. So Giamatti in the mix, there is a scene in the very first episode where you get hologram Giamatti telling Holly Hunter, who is folded up across the captain's chair about how life is like an origami chicken and just screaming like the most batshit stuff. Stephen Colbert is the ship's voice and he does like mainly ads for stuff. It's all a little cute for my tastes personally, but it is fun Star Trek. It is in the fun Star

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Trek mold.

• 49:55Russ Frushtick?

  The like Below Deck stuff.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Not quite that level of like, but it is pretty, it's, it's, you know, not that level of cuteness. I would say not that level of like irony or silliness. It's a little more grounded than that. It does feel though, you know, more in the like Joss Whedon mold maybe than a lot of these other things. Yeah. No, like it's, it's, it's, it's, it feels like they're trying. I'm old now.

• 50:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  So when people try to appeal to young people, I don't know if it's working or not.

• 50:26Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  It, but I, it feels a little bit.

• 50:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. All I know is that it has become a, a internet discourse lightning rod and I can't, I haven't bothered to do the research on like where that is all coming from and whether it's racist or not.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  It's an interesting, yes, right? Assume, right? Because Star Trek is always that dichotomy of like its foundations are extremely liberal.

• 50:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  And it attracts some people who ain't, and that's just life. I mean, that's just the way, I've been going to Star Trek conventions with my dad for 40 years and it's always been that way.

• 51:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. Um, so, but that it is, I'll say this, the first episode, like really good premise, uh, interesting ideas, interesting performances. The second episode, it goes from setting up the expansive idea to like what an episode might be like. And that episode is about, it's kind of like a. Mock you in kind of thing and then like a debate club kind of thing and then because the war college of the federation is like right next to starfleet academy. So there's some like back and forth bullies across the lake, you know, kind of rivalry there.

• 51:38Russ Frushtick?

  Revenge of their own situation, yeah.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  And everyone's in love and kissing and stuff and that's all if you like that kind of thing. Um, I don't know. I've watched two episodes. They're wildly uneven. I don't know if I'm going to go back for, for a third, but, uh, I thought it was really interesting that there's this show that is out there and Paul Giamatti and, uh, is having a great time and Holly Hunter is fantastic, but she's Holly Hunter. So she has to be. That's the law.

• 52:03Russ Frushtick?

  Right. Yep.

• 52:05Griffin McElroy?

  I thought of something I can do. Uh, the most recent episode of make some noise on the dropout platform. So this sort of improv-y comedy game show, uh, it's got this episode of Zach Reyno, Jess McKenna and Paul F. Tompkins on it. And boy, howdy, it is a barn burner, folks. This one had me ruffling all the way to the bank as a, as a, a big, super ego fan. If some of the, some of the bits felt, uh, I don't know, true to the, to the spirit of that program, which I don't think is around anymore. Uh, and it's just been a really fucking funny season. There's an episode that had, uh, Angela and Lisa and Isabella have all been, or Izzy who've all been on stuff, uh, on it before.

• 52:47Griffin McElroy?

  And they just spent the whole episode just tearing Sam Rais's butt apart. Uh,

• 52:52Russ Frushtick?

  Poor guy.

• 52:53Griffin McElroy?

  It's good. It's good TV. Uh, that's my recommendation.

• 52:57Russ Frushtick?

  They make good stuff.

• 52:59Chris Plante?

  Uh, oh, here's what I have. Nirvana, the band, the show. Now's the time to catch up.

• 53:04Griffin McElroy?

  Fuck. No way.

• 53:05Chris Plante?

  Now's the time because Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie is going to be opening in theaters in like a week and you're going to be mad at yourself that you have not caught up on Nirvana, the band, the show. You might be wondering, how do I do that? Good question. It's a little difficult. You can find the first season of it on Amazon prime right now. I think, I think you can still pay for it. The trouble with Nirvana, the band, the show is they push the Boundaries of copyright law to their breaking point. They really, really test what you can and can't use as free use down to using like

• 53:45Chris Plante?

  the Home Alone music and titles in an episode and using Mario music. Things, people who are notoriously litigious, they have no fear of running right up against.

• 53:58Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, the name alone.

• 53:59Chris Plante?

  Yes, the, true, the, um, the show is great. It's just about two buffoons who want to get a show at the Ribbly Theater in Toronto and they go about that in every imaginably terrible way possible. And that is what the movie is about, too. You will be able to see the movie and love it without having watched any of this. But I think if you are listening to the show, that means you like video games and Nirvana, the band, the show might be some of the most loving media about video games that you will find out there.

• 54:34Griffin McElroy?

  The We Shop Channel song with lyrics.

• 54:37Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, I didn't, I forgot that was them.

• 54:39Griffin McElroy?

  That's like, that is a, that's a genuine cultural touchdown for me. Yeah. Across the worlds of comedy and video gaming. You owe it to yourself to at least brush up on that.

• 54:48Russ Frushtick?

  True. I think that's it for honorable mentions. I have some folks to thank over at the Patreon, which is patreon.com/thebesties. Before I thank them, I want to mention that we have a new episode of the Bracket Battles that just dropped. It's very, very funny and cool and we enjoyed making it. Thank you to, supporting us for allowing us to make it. Here's a clip from that episode right here.

• 55:11Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking love to live in Incopolis, but like Bloodborne or Dark Souls, I don't really want to be there. Like, no matter how good the hub world is, there's werewolves and stuff, so.

• 55:23Russ Frushtick?

  Sucks. Generally not in the hub world. Usually no world.

• 55:25Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe let's just do objectively the best hub worlds, like as a gaming, as a video game thing, instead of which is the best one to live in.

• 55:34Russ Frushtick?

  How do, how do I do that?

• 55:37Griffin McElroy?

  Well, I don't know, Russ, when we decide what the best game of the year is at the end of the year, we're not saying the best game to eat the disc of. We're talking about the games as an objective, critical sort of look.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Okay, I wanna keep.

• 55:50Griffin McElroy?

  Why is that challenging in the abstract? You've been doing this for so long.

• 55:54Russ Frushtick?

  Rubric, I can't rubric out which is the best one.

• 55:57Chris Plante?

  I think we're here. I think better amenities, better amenities stays. Because I think you're gonna want that no matter what.

• 56:04Griffin McElroy?

  Your neighbors, I think, also can stay. I'm just saying that.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  And friendlier neighbors, I don't know if there's a different way of saying that, but I wanna reward hub worlds that have people you wanna go back and talk to for some reason, right? Versus just like.

• 56:19Griffin McElroy?

  Be they real people or video game characters.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 56:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I, I think that we can judge that objectively without having to imagine ourselves.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  We need to agree right now that we're not gonna get weird about friendlier later. Like, they're not friendly, they're mean. Like, we know what friendly means.

• 56:38Chris Plante?

  Interesting neighbors.

• 56:40Russ Frushtick?

  Compelling neighbors. You're, you're like you're living in the.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Oh, look at you. Roget over here.

• 56:46Griffin McElroy?

  Unpack your adjectives.

• 56:52Russ Frushtick?

  Thank you again. That was a lot of fun. Uh, some members to thank: Jack M., Chris T., Alexander B., and Diogo G. Thank you very much for supporting the besties. Thank you to everyone else who has supported the besties. You allow us to make this show possible, so thank you. Let's recap the games we talked about today. Chris Plant.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  If you're up to it.

• 57:12Chris Plante?

  Man, what didn't we talk about? We talked about Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, Neo 3, and then we got into the other stuff. We got some Make Some Noise on Dropout, Fallout Season 2, Star Trek: Fleet Academy, and Nirvana and the Band Show.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  Starfleet Academy.

• 57:27Chris Plante?

  Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Academy. It's a lot of Star. Sorry, I'm not a dork, though. I, I just have heard my dad say it a bunch, so I.

• 57:35Chris Plante?

  Sorry. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

• 57:38Russ Frushtick?

  Cool. Uh, next week, we're doing Muganix.

• 57:42Griffin McElroy?

  I will not be here for that one, but I will definitely.

• 57:45Russ Frushtick?

  Griffin's doesn't like cats, is what it boiled down to. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna, here's a little preview.

• 57:49Chris Plante?

  That's the part of the title that he doesn't like.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that part. That's the part I missed.

• 57:54Russ Frushtick?

  I have not legit, we've been doing this show for 12 years. I have never played a game more before recording an episode of The Besties.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Damn, I thought this was about to be a bigger reveal. Shit, dude, I thought this was about to be a big one. I've never played a game.

• 58:10Russ Frushtick?

  I've never played a game more than I've played Mugenix before recording the episode. So, take that what you will.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  So, I'll take it for my opinions will not be welcome or valid.

• 58:21Russ Frushtick?

  Correct.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  There will be no space for them. What part of that pleasant exchange?

• 58:29Speaker 02

  And more, uh, next week on The Besties. Be sure to join us again. The Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games?