The Best Combat in a Metroidvania . . .Ever

2025 already has a fantastic Metroidvania, errrr, Search Action game! Ender Magnolia combines Metroid, Nier, Mega Man, and Pokémon into a single, beautiful 2D experience. Technically, this is a sequel, but no prior experience is required to enjoy this indie treat. In the back half, Griffin talks about his mixed experience with Civilization 7.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Busy week in the news.

• 0:01Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  This is a joke.

• 0:09Griffin McElroy?

  We've all, we're all like getting really into retro handheld stuff, like in a big way, even more than usual. Much to, I imagine, the chagrin of our listeners. And I, I don't know, I've messed around with a bunch of them. Russ, you know more about this stuff than I do. And maybe I should have asked this when Russ, other Russ was on the show.

• 0:26Russ Frushtick?

  No, I know more than, more than him.

• 0:28Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, cool. No, I figured. So I guess what I'm looking for, I haven't found one yet that like, obviously like, I, it's important to have a good screen. And I want the processor to be like really fast and the graphics card to be like zoom in. And then what is the piece of hardware that goes in it that determines? How it makes me feel like it did when I was a kid?

• 0:54Russ Frushtick?

  Right.

• 0:55Griffin McElroy?

  So like, I know a lot of people are talking about like the Snapdragon three, like the CPU.

• 0:59Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's not gonna do it for you.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  But you're gonna need, Griffin, you're gonna upgrade your RAM. That's really awesome memories.

• 1:05Griffin McElroy?

  See, I got the upgraded Retroid Pocket 5 thinking this is gonna make it feel like it did when I was a kid, but it doesn't feel like it does.

• 1:11Chris Plante?

  No, no, you're, you're trying to find one that has an NPU.

• 1:17Griffin McElroy?

  What's that?

• 1:17Chris Plante?

  An NPU, a nostalgia processing unit.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:21Chris Plante?

  Yeah, you keep buying the normal ones and the NPUs. They're, I mean, they are expensive.

• 1:27Russ Frushtick?

  You guys don't know what the fuck you're talking about. There's only one thing you need and it's called a Wormlight. You get yourself a Wormlight and you're fucking set. You plug that into the USB-C, you need a converter, and once it's in there, you lie in the back of your, backseat of your car.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  And ask your wife to close, you ask your wife to drive you around town. Okay, this is important. You put on your Spider-Man PJs. Your wife drives you around town.

• 1:55Griffin McElroy?

  Turn the brightness all the way down.

• 1:56Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Wormlight sounds like the thing that you eat too much egg steam and then you go get an endoscopy and they use the Wormlight.

• 2:04Russ Frushtick?

  They do. It's a multi-purpose.

• 2:07Griffin McElroy?

  They used to, back, back, back in the 90s, 90s kids remember this, they would shove a Game Boy camera down there. They would get right down in there.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  My name is Justin McRoy and I know the best game of the week.

• 2:35Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Griffin McRoy. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:37Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I have fallen in love with the Metroidvania.

• 2:43Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Russ Fraschig. I know the best game of the week and we call it Search Action Games here.

• 2:49Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, God.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Silk Song Who? We can wait as long as it takes. Thanks to Ender Magnolia, Bloom in the Mist, the game that made us forget all about that the other little guy running around with his needle. We love, we love Ender Magnolia. We love these crazy little toys. These fun, these fun toys that are fun for the whole family. We're gonna tell you all about them right after this quick break.

• 3:13Griffin McElroy?

  Well, do we want Chris to tell us what it is?

• 3:14Speaker 00

  I think I covered it.

• 3:15Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, cool.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  It's unintentional. I would never want to steal his thunder, but like I described exactly what it is. It's a, it's a.

• 3:22Griffin McElroy?

  It's a fun toy that'll make you say Silk Song Who?

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Hollow Knight, Hollow Knight with toys.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  Alright, Plant, you could try to describe it better than me, but I, now that we're back from the break.

• 3:35Russ Frushtick?

  You need to say the word homunculus more than once, though. That's the key.

• 3:39Chris Plante?

  Lot of homunculus in this one. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a stab at this. So it's a sequel to a game I didn't play.

• 3:47Russ Frushtick?

  You can't say the word near.

• 3:48Chris Plante?

  That's impossible. That's not possible. Not, not only is it possible because like I can't say 10 words without saying near, but like this game.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, and no clock tower. You can't talk about clock tower eyes. There's no homunculus related.

• 4:04Chris Plante?

  Here, here's what it is. It's a Metroidvania set in the not universe of, a Search Action game set in the not universe of Nier, where there are a whole bunch of sad robots and you basically have to take their spirits to make them fight alongside you. Somewhat between like Pokemon and Mega Man boss fights. You know, you like kill a boss in Mega Man, you're like, hey, your skills are mine now. The cool shit about this game, though, is you, you basically.

• 4:33Chris Plante?

  Assign all of these characters to different buttons. So where in a other game, you would have like, oh, this is a button for a grenade. No, now you have just a spirit of a dead robot who flies out and like

• 4:46Griffin McElroy?

  It's the Jeff button.

• 4:47Chris Plante?

  Yeah, this is the Jeff button.

• 4:48Griffin McElroy?

  Triangle to Jeff.

• 4:50Chris Plante?

  You hit the Bob button.

• 4:51Griffin McElroy?

  Press X to Jason, press triangle to Jeff. We should, we should point out, this is a sequel to Enderlily's Quietness of the Nights, which was a game that I played and I thought was cool. And then I dropped it and then I picked this one up and I just finished a hundred percenting it this morning. It's, uh, it's, it's so fucking good. It's a lot better than the first game.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  It took a little, little bit to, um, uh, it took a little bit for this to click for me. At first, when I started playing, uh, it feels like a fairly sort of standard search action. One of these, you're a really underpowered, and not just a standard search action. Like this specific kind of search action where you are a, a little wispy nothing, right? Thrust into the scariest place in the world, uh, and you have to like slowly build your skillset, uh, by like basically defeating these, these, these homunculi who will lend you their, their aid with their like, basically their cores, I think. Um, the way that I, I was describing this to Griffin as this sort of congealed for me yesterday,

• 5:54Speaker 00

  but like, the experience of playing it reminds me a little bit of if you were like, like playing an MMO RPG in a raiding setting where you have several different kind of plates that you're spinning. And depending on how you've had your skill set up, there may be one that's like, for example, uh, in my current loadout, I have an owl that I summon with one button and he just stays. And then I have, uh, like a big attack that's like a straightforward fire attack that is on a timer. So it's like triggered and then I have a shooting attack that's on like a hold down. So I'm like holding that down. So it's basically like, you have a lot of different abilities and the way they like interact is very interesting.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  But it's also, you're trying to keep a lot of different things going in your head at once. So a lot of times for me, the challenge is like, hey, don't forget you have that fifth other thing that you can be doing right now. You just gotta layer that on. But what I think is really smart about that is They give you sort of like a suite of, at least this is, this was my experience. It's pretty open ended, but I got a suite of like four powers for the four face buttons. And it kind of sat there for a while and it was like, let me kind of get comfortable with those. And then it started adding ways to like vary that, but it did give me enough time to sort of like, get comfortable with those, but it's a really interesting, like a lot of flexibility and it feels different.

• 7:17Griffin McElroy?

  There's also it's a system of relics, which are equipable sort of modifiers to, you know, your different stats and how much damage you do and defense, and they do all kinds of stuff similar to, oh God, what were they called in Hollow Knight trinkets? I think something like that.

• 7:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they work the same way.

• 7:34Griffin McElroy?

  And those also help you shape your build because you might find a relic that's like, this increases the damage of autonomous abilities by 30%. And you're like, oh, fuck. Okay. I wonder what would happen if I just got rid of all of the abilities that I have that are on active cooldown or whatever, and just equip these auto abilities.

• 7:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, turn it into an auto shooter, basically.

• 7:53Griffin McElroy?

  Right. Which sometimes like I had to do for some of the boss fights because you have to focus a lot more on dodging and parrying. And when you're doing that, just having these three ghosts, these three robot ghosts fucking dealing all your damage for you is very, very cool.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  It's huge changes to even like the individual abilities have like alternate forms.

• 8:14Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  So there's like that straight ahead fire attack that I was talking about. There is a variant that you get fairly early on that is an arcing ice attack, which doesn't seem that big of a deal. And in like running around, it's not as huge, but when you're in a boss fight, it's the difference between, are you typically going to encounter this guy where he's like dead in front of you? Or are you going to be guessing where he's going to be where an arc would be more helpful? And like that kind of like analysis with the boss fight, um, I, I, I found it really interesting.

• 8:44Chris Plante?

  Before we go too much further into the gameplay, uh, just to give some people to hold on to something here. Can anybody explain the story and what is happening?

• 8:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I beat the first game, so I can.

• 8:55Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, perfect. Thank you. This does not have much to do with the first game from what I can tell.

• 9:01Chris Plante?

  More stylist.

• 9:02Russ Frushtick?

  than anything. There are like subtle nods to the first game.

• 9:05Chris Plante?

  But it is not a necessary thing to like.

• 9:08Russ Frushtick?

  Basically, here's what you need to know. This child person, kid, basically gets sent into this area that is filled with all of these basically rotten robots that have been infected by this.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  That's why they call the game Rotten Robots.

• 9:26Russ Frushtick?

  It's evil steam that's infected them.

• 9:29Chris Plante?

  Rotten Robots: Rise of the Evil Steam is the name of the full name of it.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Russ's Rotten Robots: Rise of the Evil Egg Steam.

• 9:35Chris Plante?

  Holy shit, I would play the hell out of that. That's it, man.

• 9:39Russ Frushtick?

  And you're basically just going around, uh, learning about the background of this world as you beat monsters and they're they tell you their sad story after you kill the evil robot and they become nice and join your party.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Seems like robots and humans used to get along a lot better. They used to be chilling together really good.

• 9:55Russ Frushtick?

  It is staggeringly similar to the plot of Lies of P and no other games that I can think of.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  And it sure. Yeah, there's no other game. Yeah, it's a lot like, yeah, it's a lot like this. Man, yeah, we need a narrowing of IP. I feel like we need a win win. We need a, uh, uh, an MC, a, uh, an ultimate universe, but for like all of gaming. So we could just condense all these franchises down into one.

• 10:20Russ Frushtick?

  I would say narratively, like, I don't think it's as immediately intriguing as something like Hollow Knight or Dark Souls, where they like kind of obscure exactly what the fuck is going on. But I do think it gives you a little more to grab on to. And I would say the backstories that you get of the characters that you're defeating and then using as powers helps to humanize the powers that you're using.

• 10:42Chris Plante?

  It's like a short story collection for sad robots. Like each, each boss you beat is like 30 seconds of a little tiny story that stands on its own.

• 10:50Russ Frushtick?

  And I, on the bosses specifically, just to briefly go back to the gameplay, I do want to call out, I think the one aspect, there aren't very many metroidvania, sorry, there aren't very many search action games that do combat as well as this game. And I would include Hollow Knight in that. I think the combat in this game is better than Hollow Knight's combat. And why that is. Is when you were doing a build, we were talking about builds earlier. When you were doing a build in Hollow Knight, almost exclusively, it was those trinkets that you were equipping. Oh, I need a little more range, or oh, I need whatever, extra defense. And it was all in the trinkets. The fact that you are tweaking both the trinkets and the abilities at any given time.

• 11:29Griffin McElroy?

  And your equipment, there's like different types of equipment that you can equip that also gives you like different ways to counter or.

• 11:35Russ Frushtick?

  And there's a physicality to those changes that aren't just stat changes. Justin was referencing like the ice arc attack. Like, when I do a boss fight in this game, I will look and see, oh, this guy is flying up in the air. So anything ground based is going to be worthless. I'm going to unequip that. I'm going to use more automated things. I'm going to increase my running speed, or if I need a slightly higher jump, I can do that.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  The ice will sometimes freeze and it'll buy you like two seconds to maybe knock down a health potion or something like.

• 12:04Russ Frushtick?

  It all just coalesces into something that gives you more ownership over how you're playing through it and therefore it actually makes the whole experience feel better. And speaking of ownership, let me just say, I don't know if you guys saw.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  You pirated this.

• 12:16Russ Frushtick?

  You can tweak, you can tweak every aspect of the difficulty and that'll, you can increase or decrease enemy health. You can increase your personal health, cooldowns, et cetera, et cetera. And either you can make it like more manageable for yourself if you have struggles with these games. Or if you find it too easy, you can increase the difficulty and that'll increase the amount of like resources you're getting on a given moment, which is really smart.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  I defaulted to easy on this one because I wanted to see a bunch of it.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  And I found that to be a really good experience. Like it's, I'm not getting hung up. The bosses are not super hard, but I do have to think about like what I'm taking into the fight, but it's kind of the deal. Like, once you get the hook or the gimmick of it, it's not too hard to actually execute it.

• 13:01Russ Frushtick?

  It's not as hard as Hollow Knight by even like, I found it to be much more approachable.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  I enjoy that a lot though, because you don't, I don't think these environments are interesting enough to where I would want to.

• 13:14Griffin McElroy?

  Do it over and over and over.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  Yes, right. I would not want to be.

• 13:16Griffin McElroy?

  Some of the, I will say some of the later ones are pretty like, some of the later ones, if you get careless for like a second, you'll be, I played it on normal and you get absolutely torn apart. But there's no death penalty. You don't like lose souls or whatever. So there's like no reason not to kind of push, push your luck a little bit.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  I do want to, if we could just return to the story thing a little bit, I do want to complain a bit about a narrative thing that has been a trend lately, I, not lately, past five, 10 years. I feel like the success of games like Elden Ring and the Souls games where the narrative is more of a, it's more of like a plotmosphere thing where like it's an abstract.

• 14:04Griffin McElroy?

  Did you invent that? I like that.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  No.

• 14:06Griffin McElroy?

  Did you invent that?

• 14:07Speaker 00

  No, I, I think the first time I heard it was people talking about Bioshock. Or maybe even Sleep No More, like plotmosphere, like it's like the, the, the story is around you, but you're not like going through a narrative.

• 14:18Griffin McElroy?

  There's not a, a beat by beat narrative necessarily.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  I think there's ga, I think that like for a lot of games, that makes a lot of sense because you're, you're cooking in a world, you're living in a world, you're inhabiting it. And like, it's so richly created that like, they need to lay out the texture for you. Like, and you can kind of like fill in the gaps of the aesthetics. It's all jiving together. But it's not like a shortcut for having an actual story, right? It doesn't save you from having to make it narratively compelling. I feel like a lot of games have gotten the wrong lesson from that and have decided to not do stories anymore. And just kind of have like story fragments, like vibes, you know what I mean? Without actually adding anything to it, like near was abstract, but

• 15:05Speaker 00

  the, or surreal is probably a better way of describing it. But there were those like points of narrative that you can like cling on to that are at least helping to propel you. Like even with like surrealist or abstract film, you have some sort of like something that is taking you through it, right? You're not experiencing the entire thing out of sequence holistically. And I feel like it's, it's, it's a shortcut for having an actual compelling story that a lot of times just gets in the way of the, the, the rest of the stuff, if you're not actually executing it.

• 15:38Griffin McElroy?

  I think the thing that is supposed to be pulling people through the story is, is, is the characters, is the like different, uh, you know, automaton. That you befriend and recruit. And that does sort of get fleshed out the further you get into the story. My, I agree with the, the plot atmosphere complaints. I feel like this game is missing a first act.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:00Griffin McElroy?

  Where it's like, explains what the fuck is, uh, anything and what's going on. Uh, you really have to kind of put in, put in some effort to.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Credit to them though, I did kind of know where I should be going by and large, like.

• 16:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  You got, you can cut like, it's a pretty good pathing, but I didn't have any idea what I was doing or why I was doing it.

• 16:19Griffin McElroy?

  If we could talk about just sort of like traversal and progress, I love the way this game handles it. You get double jump and air dash at the same time, 10 minutes into the game.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  That's how we do it. What was that last, what was that one that we just played where, or Prince of Persia? Where you didn't get air dash until like almost the end of the game. This is how you do it. Give me my double jump.

• 16:37Russ Frushtick?

  I think it's good design sign. If you, if they are willing to make a, able to make a game that doesn't give you that early. It didn't bother me here, but I'm always impressed by a game like Prince of Persia. That's like, it's going to be 10 hours.

• 16:49Griffin McElroy?

  And it really gives you a lot of tools to mess with the game's sort of intended route, right? Like whenever you do your melee attack chain, every time you do an attack, you get a little bit of height, right? And every time you do like a movement action, whether it's a dash or like a parry or a double jump, it resets that chain. So I was able to more times than I can count, get somewhere I wasn't supposed to be yet, because I could jump, do my attacks. Dash, do my attacks, do my double jump, do my attacks.

• 17:20Russ Frushtick?

  Fucking animal well skills right there.

• 17:22Griffin McElroy?

  You really like, it's, it's very approachable tech. And I found myself, there was one area where I got to the final boss of the area after only being in the area for like a minute and a half. And then I was like, oh, cool. Now I have the traversal ability that this boss unlocked. I can just run through this whole area. Real, real quick. I found that to be, uh, very, very exciting and also a testament to the fact that it doesn't fuck the game up. Like that is, it clearly by design, you're able to do this because it's not that hard.

• 17:50Russ Frushtick?

  I want to hear from Plant because Plant, we know, doesn't care for these games. And I'd like to know, I mean, we've talked a little bit about the narrative being like there, but kind of light. So I'm curious what it is that's like pulling you through this in ways that hasn't previously done.

• 18:09Chris Plante?

  Yeah, no, that's a great question. It's the action. It has to be the action. I think the combat is just so much more compelling than it is in like 99% of these games. And it's the type of action that I crave. That's because I want to be clear. Hollow Knight, great. I'm glad people love it. I hope to one day fall in love with it. Maybe before Silk Sun comes out, which means I probably have another 15 years. But for here, it is, it's kind of doing a Platinum Games thing. It reminded me of, what was that, the Platinum Games one on the Switch where you were like, Unchained Chain Souls?

• 18:54Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, Unchained Spirit? Yeah, I remember. It had chains in it and you were a cop.

• 18:58Chris Plante?

  Yeah, and you literally had a like ghastly robot thing that fought on your behalf and you couldn't switch them out.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  You're thinking of Geists.

• 19:07Chris Plante?

  I wish. I wish I was thinking of Geists.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  You're thinking of Omicron, the Nomad Soul.

• 19:13Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's interesting you make the Platinum. I want to just address the Platinum thing. Because I actually found, I hate Platinum Games, as we know. I've just like, I don't hate them, but they've never appealed to me, really. And part of that is because I think they're very busy. And I think they overload you with, here's a combo that you do X Y Y, X X X Y X, pause, Y. And all that stuff goes right over my head. And what I liked about this is that all of your different powers are so compartmentalized and relatively simple. So it's more just about equipping the things and then executing the things rather than keeping a lot of like combos and shit in your head.

• 19:50Chris Plante?

  That's interesting to me because I don't remember any combos. I'm not a combo person in action games. I struggle with games like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. But what I like about the combat here that reminds me of more modern Platinum Games is it's more Like stringing together tricks. So it's, hey, I'm going to charge that person. It's gonna pop them in the air. Then I'm gonna use my scythe, which can rally them up higher and higher and higher. They're going to drop, so I'm going to ground pound onto them. And then I'm gonna use like my, whatever my heavy attack is right then. And it's not all about, oh, I'm gonna deploy the same combo over and over and over again, because

• 20:32Chris Plante?

  I've nailed the controls and it's the most powerful thing I can accomplish. It's, this is what feels fun in the moment and takes the most advantage of the environment around me. Cause that's the other part of what's cool about the combat here is it's not just, oh, you're on a flat surface with your enemy. There are height variations and you have some enemies that are flying. You have some that have, um, they're really slow, but they shoot out their weapon really far and like an instant. So you're having to use dodge.

• 21:00Russ Frushtick?

  There's a great fight against a, um, a dung beetle.

• 21:04Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 21:05Russ Frushtick?

  Where there's like just a giant ball that you cannot shoot through. It's just like right in front of you. So you have to like work your way around that problem. In ways that like did not match any other build that I had used previously in the game.

• 21:18Chris Plante?

  The combat and the action ends up feeling more like a puzzle or even just like improvisation, which I really, really enjoy. So I, I think that's it. I think the other part is it being so easy to zip around the map. I just have so little patience for backtracking, even in the game. I think the art here is quite beautiful at times. But I have no patience for that, even in the best metroidvania, search action games.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  On that note, um, I know other games have done this. I'm pretty sure Prince of Persia did something similar, but this game is so clear about when you are done with a room.

• 21:53Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 00

  Which I really, as somebody who hates backtracking, I really love that because that says to me like, well, that room's still gray and I don't think I missed anything. So let me go back in there and like poke around and save me for having like, oh my God, what did I miss? I'll just do it right now. And I love. It for my brain, like, I need that. Like, I need it.

• 22:15Griffin McElroy?

  It doesn't just make it more approachable. It makes it, I a hundred percent of the game because I wanted that big blue. Whenever you finish an area and find everything that's in an area, you get this little blue seal next to the area's name. And I'm like, oh, that feels good. I never have to step foot in that fucking nasty rotten place ever again.

• 22:32Russ Frushtick?

  The game also does something that Metroid Dread did, which I absolutely love is rather than having you have to keep in your head. Oh, I saw a cracked wall over here, but I don't have the ability to go there. Everything is tracked in the map. So if you pull open the map, it'll say locked door or oh, is a locked door, but you have the key now. Or oh, you need to bash through this with the power you just got.

• 22:56Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Russ Frushtick?

  So the map tells you, but it doesn't do the thing that I think some search action games do, which I don't like is here's a fucking waypoint. You gotta go here. And I don't like that. That feels a little counter to the spirit of the genre. But it is in a way like just giving you enough, you kind of to lead you along.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  You also, and this is like, this is getting pretty ephemeral, but I really feel like this is a game that has a clear map. That is well represented, that you can actually visualize navigating. I think a lot of these games that feel so organic and textured in their map design, they start to get so nuanced that you can't even really tell.

• 23:36Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, fucking Elden Ring has like six layers going on.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  Exactly. I don't know. This map is not helping me. This is a good map, man. I know where I am. And the, and the waypoints, you could automatically go to them whenever you want to. You have from the pause menu, you can fast travel right back. And I don't, there's not a penalty for death as far as I can tell.

• 23:54Russ Frushtick?

  No, there isn't.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  It's very generous in that way, which I really appreciate. The only thing that kind of annoyed me early on. I struggled with a couple of bosses where I felt like I would get in. Sort of like attack patterns that I couldn't break out of that would like wipe me in one hit. Like you would have a big attack that you would get caught in and it would like literally like three hits and you're and you're done before you even hit the ground. You can go, you can die really, even on easy, you die really quick.

• 24:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, but I think as you play, you sort of unlock stuff that can mitigate that.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 24:28Griffin McElroy?

  You have these totems that I played the whole game with this one totem, which is like a piece of equipment that made it that if you died, it refilled your life once, one time, which like is such a huge relief to like the number of times that thing saved me. I don't know that this game does anything hugely inventive, right? Like, I don't think it is necessarily a a shift in the genre. I think it just really, it nails the fundamentals and layers on top of them. Really good RPG systems, like really good build crafting and really good, like fully customizable combat. And that's a, that's a lot of.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  You say no innovation, but like a combat system as hard as this must have been to make balanced and nuanced.

• 25:18Russ Frushtick?

  And to look good.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  And to look good. That's gotta be top of the design document, right? When you're starting, that's gotta be the big idea because I feel like that does feel very different from a lot of, a lot of these games. There are so many different, like not just satisfying different combinations, but like different weapons that very clearly communicate why you would want to use them in one circumstance over another without having to get out a graphing calculator.

• 25:43Russ Frushtick?

  And that was a big change. I mean, the first game kind of started dipping a toe into this stuff and the first game's combat is quite good. But they really, all of the like flexibility that you have where each weapon has like sub weapons attached to it and things like that. That's all stuff that was added, so they've really spent a lot of time. I, I would echo this, just to reiterate. I don't think there is a search action game with a better combat system than this. That this is the bar.

• 26:10Griffin McElroy?

  Hell yeah.

• 26:10Russ Frushtick?

  And when Silk Song does come out, which is never, I.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Not now.

• 26:15Chris Plante?

  After they play, it's like, oh, well, it's back to the drawing board.

• 26:18Russ Frushtick?

  Seven more years, maybe.

• 26:20Griffin McElroy?

  There is, I mean, we keep comparing those two games. I think they're pretty wildly different.

• 26:24Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:24Griffin McElroy?

  In the way that, in the way that Hollow Knight and Silk Song do not offer you that level of customization, you have to master, it's, it's Dark Souls versus Sekiro, right? Like Sekiro is like, you have to get good at this thing. And Hollow Knight is so fucking tight, so, so, so, so tight. In a way where this game isn't at times, which is fine, because it, that means that the RPG systems are so rich that you could make a build that completely just shad racks this boss you've been stuck on for an hour.

• 26:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I would also say, for what it's worth, I find Hollow Knight's like art design and tone to be more interesting, personally more interesting, just because they, I think, are a little more risky and a little bit silly at times in a world that's like very fucking dark.

• 27:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Russ Frushtick?

  Whereas this is like basically grim start to finish.

• 27:13Chris Plante?

  I, I love my near, I, this is, it felt a little familiar at times, the art style, you know? And it's not bad, let me be clear, better than like most of what's out there, but I, I agree.

• 27:24Griffin McElroy?

  I do want to just say- These are minor, these are minor criticisms of a game that I, this is, this is my favorite thing I've played this year, uh, pretty, pretty handily.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  You guys think it's weird in gaming, it's getting more common to have, I feel like this and, um, Magical Mr. Mustopheles, what was the Japanese RPG you guys liked so much last year?

• 27:45Griffin McElroy?

  Metaphor Refentazio.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  It's like getting more common to have the games that are sort of like adjacent. They're like not in a franchise, but there's, they sort of are, you know what I mean? They're like, they might as, not even like a spiritual successor, but like, it's basically understood that they are a part of the franchise without-

• 28:07Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, this is, this is a different story, that, Metaphor Refentazio was the same developer, same, you know, same people behind Persona, this is more-

• 28:17Russ Frushtick?

  You know, this is a different studio entirely.

• 28:19Chris Plante?

  Inspired by.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  No, but there's like a shorthand, right? That we have started to establish. It's like you, you get it.

• 28:25Russ Frushtick?

  I, I guess I, I would, I agree with the art. Sad robots did not come from near. Like, let's be real.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  I wasn't really talking about.

• 28:34Russ Frushtick?

  They came from. Oh, what, what franchise were you saying?

• 28:36Speaker 00

  I was thinking more of like the, with the, the metaphor, Refontazio and, and Persona, like having these, like, I know you can't talk about near with this, but it, it, it is a, the story of this makes sense to you. If the story of this makes sense to you, it is because of the groundwork that is laid by games like that. Right? So they are building off of a story framework that you already have in your head. Right?

• 29:03Chris Plante?

  Yes.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  With no context, you play this game and you're like, what is happening right now? But in conversation with near and Liza P and all those other like homunculus video games. Like, I feel like you kind of get it.

• 29:15Chris Plante?

  Fresh, you're right that like the near didn't invent the sad robot, but I think a lot of people who are playing this have enjoyed the mirror and are, are bringing near to them. There's one thing.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  Or Liza P or Bioshock.

• 29:28Chris Plante?

  Yes.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  I, I. Marketing point. If you're pitching it to a friend or somebody else, you're like, do you remember how you like persona? Remember how you like mirror? Well.

• 29:38Chris Plante?

  I want to go back to one thing Hoop said about the story here and like having something to hold on to. And this is just a request before we wrap to developers and also to, to people who play these games. A really simple, you might even call it trophy story is okay. In fact, it's great. And the best experimental filmmakers are already doing that. David Lynch, I would say Inland Empire, probably the most difficult Lynch film to get into. It is about an actress who is cursed and is told that if you make this movie, things will go very, very bad. And then every 15 minutes, you can check in on the most simple story imaginable. Holy Motors, very complicated movie.

• 30:22Chris Plante?

  It's about an actor who wakes up and has to put on makeup between. Six different roles or however many that he's going to perform that day.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Straight story? Don't even get me started.

• 30:33Chris Plante?

  It's a straight story.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  It's a straight story.

• 30:35Chris Plante?

  I, I, I think we should not, one, like, artists should not be afraid about buildings. If you're going to build something really abstract, using something extremely familiar as a through line is a powerful thing. And us as the audience should not discount something just because it's like familiar and simple. Like it, we connect with those things for a very.

• 30:57Russ Frushtick?

  It's a platform to do something new, but it's a gateway.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  I do think in, in a game, in anything other than like where the, the pieces of the game have been abstracted out to like Thomas was alone, which is a bad example, but like, unless there's like completely abstracted, if you're talking about people. I think that if you want me to play the game, you've gotta at least give me something that I am working towards narratively. So I can make that part of my brain shut up for a while. Right? You know what I mean? Like without that, even a basic like, I have to find my sister. Okay. You know, I'll look around for my sister for a while, like something like that, just to get me started.

• 31:34Russ Frushtick?

  And even like Minecraft is like, you need a fucking house, dude. You need to be able to sleep.

• 31:39Chris Plante?

  When was the last time you played Minecraft? Cause I have never seen a message pop up. It's like, hey, it's notch.

• 31:44Russ Frushtick?

  I'm fucking grinding mine coins left and right. You, you haven't seen my, uh, mine coin grinding machine?

• 31:50Chris Plante?

  I haven't seen your mine coin.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  Astral chain.

• 31:53Chris Plante?

  Astral chain.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  Astral chain.

• 31:57Russ Frushtick?

  We did it.

• 31:58Chris Plante?

  You just got a bunch of people.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  Russ is making another Minecraft movie coming in 2027. It's a different Minecraft movie.

• 32:06Russ Frushtick?

  It's gonna be so fucking good. I've got circles in mine. Oh my God.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  He got back black.

• 32:11Chris Plante?

  The game is called Ender Magnolia Bloom in the Mist. It's important.

• 32:15Speaker 00

  Got back black.

• 32:19Griffin McElroy?

  Play it and let's go to break.

• 32:23Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, I played Civilization VII, the seventh of Sid Meier's diabolical little world boxes that he loves to build.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Griffin, can I ask you, as a layman and as an outsider?

• 32:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  And this is gonna sound kinda stupid, and I don't mean it to, but I thought all these were good. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I thought this was a series where like, each time, there's some series where like, everyone comes out and everybody likes them all. I thought this was one of those.

• 32:50Griffin McElroy?

  No, this is the seventh one of them. So like, obviously, they've realized their mistakes every time, and then like, we gotta fix it, we gotta do it better. I am not like a Civ expert. I picked up the series at five, and I played a lot of five, and I played some six, didn't love it, uh, and now there's seven. I'd like to share my thoughts, if I, if I, if I may. I don't know if any of you guys actually played it, uh, and I'm seeing a lot of head shaking.

• 33:17Russ Frushtick?

  I found it very scary. Yeah, played, played two hours.

• 33:20Chris Plante?

  I played two hours. It was a trance.

• 33:23Griffin McElroy?

  It was a trance? In what way?

• 33:25Chris Plante?

  Like, I, I played two hours, like, this is gonna teach me how to play the game, and it proceeded to tell me rules. But then, by the end of the two hours, I had no idea how I had done literally anything.

• 33:37Griffin McElroy?

  I, I mean, Civilization, and I would say probably any 4X strategy game, is a thing where I feel like you have to have a couple runs at it. It requires almost the way that we talk about like JRPGs requiring time before you get to the good stuff. Like, it's such an insanely dense. It comes with its own encyclopedia of rules, and the encyclopedia of this one is not particularly, uh, informative, I will say.

• 34:01Chris Plante?

  Even though all the games are different, is it also like the genre where it took me multiple Souls likes before I really got into them? But all the hours I put into each one prepared me for the next one.

• 34:12Griffin McElroy?

  Absolutely, they will prepare you. I felt prepared for Civilization VII based on the time I spent with the other games. Even though Civ VII does make some pretty huge changes. In some ways, I will say they have streamlined, if you can believe it, uh, the way a lot of the systems work, they have made. Certain processes automatic that before required micromanagement like there's you don't you no longer have to like spawn builders in order to like you know make buildings and produce buildings like all of that stuff happens sort of automatically as your city expands. There's a lot of stuff like that that they have that they have sort of streamlined the I will say like I think the two big changes that they've made.

• 34:53Griffin McElroy?

  I think one is great. I think one has really lost me. The one that's great is they've fully overhauled the way sort of diplomacy works in the in the game, which is obviously important for a, you know, a world conquering.

• 35:07Griffin McElroy?

  Big board game essentially where you're going up against other world leaders before it was like kind of abstract and you know, sometimes you would obviously see like signs of aggression like, oh, man, this guy's really running up on my borders. I hope he doesn't declare war on me. Oh, he did. Now I have to go into war. Oh, no, all my citizens are super fucking unhappy. It was like kind of it kind of felt like a crap shoot every time. Now you have a resource called influence that you accrue, just like gold and, you know, science and all of the other resources in the game. And you spend that to do different things. Like if you want to get a city state on your side, you can spend influence to attract them.

• 35:44Griffin McElroy?

  You also use it for like espionage stuff. So you can spend influence on espionage actions like stealing somebody's like scientific discovery or forming a trade alliance with somebody. All of that stuff is like really mechanical now in a way that I find fucking rad. I think is has has made the whole idea of how do I get this whole nation on my side? Or how do I defend myself or weaken this other nation? All of that is like pretty understandable now and you have like a list of options and costs and and all that. The big thing that this game does different is it separates the whole of the game into three ages.

• 36:23Griffin McElroy?

  There is like the classic age, there is the age of exploration, and then there is the modern age. And there's a set time limit that you pick basically when you start the game for each of those different ages and as different. You know, societies grow and hit these different sort of like benchmarks and hit these complete these like mission objectives. That clock moves forward and forward until the age ends. You kind of cash out. You sort of like, if you completed these different science missions, you will get a science point that you can invest at the start of the next age.

• 37:00Russ Frushtick?

  Got it.

• 37:00Griffin McElroy?

  It's basically a sort of rubber banding system that stops the game. This is why they did it, I think. It stops the game from snowballing on turn 10, where it's like, well, this is decided. We can play another 95 turns of this if you want, but like this guy is so in the instead, there's two sort of soft resets that they have in a campaign.

• 37:21Russ Frushtick?

  And you feel like you could rally at the end of an era if things are going poorly because you get some sort of bonus at the end.

• 37:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, you get you get a bonus, right? So you're starting out stronger if you did a good job in the last era and you have the sort of a focused idea. It'll give you a jumpstart on the next one, but it also does kind of put everyone on sort of a level playing field. Right? And then in the modern era, that's where you get your game winning objectives that you're now you now it's a race to see who can get there first.

• 37:48Griffin McElroy?

  I I I don't love it. And I think that it kind of goes hand in hand with the other big change that I don't love, which is they have unpaired like leaders from actual civilizations, right? So like at the start of the game, you pick your leader. So it's like, oh, I'll pick.

• 38:07Russ Frushtick?

  Gandhi is like the known one, right?

• 38:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, say like, I'll pick Gandhi and then you have to pick your ancient civilization to start like, okay, well, I'll pick Rome, I guess. What if Gandhi was the leader of Rome? Okay, cool. You get to the end of the age, you have to pick a whole new civilization, right? And it's the ones that are available to you are based on sort of like what what achievements you have made in the in the prior age.

• 38:33Russ Frushtick?

  So you're not sticking with Rome and Gandhi for the whole all three eras?

• 38:36Griffin McElroy?

  Sometimes you can, but like not into the modern era.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  Sometimes you gotta ditch Gandhi and get serious.

• 38:42Griffin McElroy?

  So no, you stay with your, I'm pretty sure there's no way to change your leader, but you change the nation. And all it does is kind of like, it doesn't wipe the map clean, right? Like, all the stuff that you built on the map, the state of the board game is the same. It's, I mean, shit will have different names. But then, like, the different abilities and the different kind of, like, modifiers that the different nations get, those change age to age. And I don't know, man, I feel like it takes away the thing that I like about Civilization, which is like, buil- building, like, I am building this thing. It is the reason that that whole one more turn kind of idea works. And I, I know that, I think this is gonna be divisive. I think there's lots of people who are fed up with the way Civilization works, who are excited about this. For me, it got rid of that feeling of like,

• 39:27Griffin McElroy?

  it's turn 100, I know exactly how I got to where I am. And I know exactly the state of the world. Having that sort of soft reset kind of, uh, I don't know, it really, really took all the wind out of my sails every time it happened.

• 39:43Griffin McElroy?

  So that's like, that's the lay of the land. Uh, it is still, if you have played Civ before, like, all the core systems are pretty identifiable, pretty recognizable. And it is neat, like, it is very, very cool, especially once you start fucking around with like, what if this time, instead of building a huge military, I instead tried to become this, like, diplomatic spy master and, and, and try to win that way? Like, being able to do that stuff is very, very cool. It's the big structural changes I am not so wild about, but I also am a fairly recent, like, newcomer to the series. And maybe there are people who are, who are excited about this idea of this sort of rebalancing, restructuring.

• 40:22Russ Frushtick?

  My impression in reading the reviews is that people that are, like, old school Civ people don't like the changes. But I'm also really sensitive to the, how fucking hard it must be. And this is not a, like, pro or con about the game, but imagine having to make a new fucking Civ game.

• 40:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 40:43Russ Frushtick?

  It's not like making Madden every year, where it's like, oh, we, we, there's a hit stick now and whatever, there's new players. You have to, like, recreate chess a little bit each time you do it. And that's really-

• 40:56Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, but no one asked them- Two.

• 40:59Russ Frushtick?

  I know, that's not, I'm not making an excuse.

• 41:01Griffin McElroy?

  No one made them. They're the ones who wanted 60 new dollars, you know? I already gave them the 60 dollars.

• 41:07Russ Frushtick?

  Giving them a, I'm not saying they were right, whatever, whatever it is. I'm just, as an intellectual experience.

• 41:13Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 41:13Russ Frushtick?

  If someone came to me and is like, you need to make a new Civ game, I'd be shitting my pants.

• 41:18Griffin McElroy?

  Right. And I, I, I think that they are taking some big, bold swings with this game. But, and this is, I think, the case, this was certainly the case with Civ 6. Like, some of the changes are fucking great, and some of them I don't, I really, really don't care for. Um, your, your mileage is gonna vary a whole lot. I think that despite the fact that some stuff has been done to make this a more sort of user-friendly, beginner-friendly experience, I still think like Civ 4 or 5 is the, is the gold standard, just because, I don't know, I think they are, they are better games, but.

• 41:52Russ Frushtick?

  Did this work on Steam Deck for you, Griffin?

• 41:54Griffin McElroy?

  I didn't try it, didn't even try it. The idea of it.

• 41:56Russ Frushtick?

  I think it is supported on Steam Deck for, for those who have.

• 41:59Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, it's on consoles, right? So like, a lot of the stuff seems like.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  I mean, the only way I would do that is if I paired my Steam Deck to a TV and then get a Bluetooth mouse. Before, instead of my laptop.

• 42:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. So that's the Civ 7.

• 42:13Russ Frushtick?

  Thank you for teaching us, Griffin. We appreciate it.

• 42:15Griffin McElroy?

  You're welcome.

• 42:16Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, we have just a couple reader mail questions I wanted to call out. Um, this one comes from Archie McCaris. Uh, did any of you finish Lorelei and the Laser Eyes? I know there were some hesitations about the UI and the general obtusiveness, but in retrospect, every single aspect feels so intentional, and it comes together as a really compelling piece of art. Did anyone go back to it?

• 42:38Griffin McElroy?

  Nope. Uh, no, I played, I, I would say I got maybe halfway through it and did not, I really liked it. I just kept hitting walls where I wasn't making any progress.

• 42:50Russ Frushtick?

  I keep wondering if it's gonna come out on mobile, because their games, that game in particular felt very touch-friendly.

• 42:56Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  It's hard, yeah. It's, when you have to play a new game, not have to, but when you. Play a new game every week. That's, that's the kind of game that tends to fall through the cracks is the ones that have some, some rough edges.

• 43:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, we have one more question. This comes from Matthew. Uh, hi besties. I'm having surgery in April, which means six weeks. I, for six weeks, I have to avoid raising my hands above shoulder level. What games do you recommend for post-surgery? Ideally, something that you can sink a lot of hours into without raising your blood pressure too much.

• 43:27Griffin McElroy?

  Dragon Quest 11. Dragon Quest 11. Dragon Quest 11. So easy. It's right there. Do it.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Builders, though. What about?

• 43:38Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, I love Dragon Quest Builders.

• 43:39Griffin McElroy?

  Not a bad idea either.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Dragon Quest Builders.

• 43:41Griffin McElroy?

  Dragon Quest Builders 2. Dragon Quest Builders 2, please.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Dragon Quest Builders 2 is, oh my God. Oh, oh, I just got something that's like stomach pain, except it's the feeling of wanting to play Dragon Quest Builders 2 so much.

• 43:53Griffin McElroy?

  It runs like shit on Steam Deck sadly.

• 43:55Russ Frushtick?

  Really?

• 43:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  I would also say, uh, I had a really outrageously great beach trip once where I played almost the entirety of Persona 4 on my PlayStation Portable.

• 44:07Russ Frushtick?

  Oh yeah. Persona seems like a good one because you're, you're just stuck and you're just reading and that's not going to jam your, uh, blood pressure up.

• 44:14Griffin McElroy?

  I'd say Four Golden. Yeah, but if you're worried about.

• 44:16Russ Frushtick?

  It's heavy.

• 44:17Griffin McElroy?

  Even more with the, the blood pressure, I think Dragon Quest is. What if this person doesn't like RPGs?

• 44:23Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, that's a good question. Um, the binding, no, don't do binding.

• 44:29Griffin McElroy?

  Why not? I think, I think it's a good answer.

• 44:31Russ Frushtick?

  No, no, I, my fucking blood pressure gets jacked and I've been playing for 700 hours.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  I mean, that's it for Hades would be my other, I mean, that's one I've put a billion hours into.

• 44:39Russ Frushtick?

  Man.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  Um, I would say that like Bellatro, I don't really get that tense about like, I, it, but I have played a bunch, like.

• 44:47Russ Frushtick?

  Bellatro is a good one. Uh, I would recommend on mobile rather than platform.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Solitaria also is similar. Um.

• 44:54Griffin McElroy?

  If you want to go for sheer content, I'll say Final Fantasy 14 has a lot to offer you.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:00Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, if you.

• 45:01Speaker 00

  I also recommend books.

• 45:03Griffin McElroy?

  Books, yeah. Check them out.

• 45:05Russ Frushtick?

  Was there one in particular?

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Not a big reader.

• 45:07Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  I haven't had time. I haven't had time this week. Been really swamped.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  No, I only read Romancity and I don't think our listeners care about an in the shadow.

• 45:18Russ Frushtick?

  Should I be reading Onyx Storm, Justin?

• 45:20Speaker 00

  What?

• 45:21Russ Frushtick?

  Should I be reading Onyx Storm? It seems like a phenomenon.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  Did you read, I mean, did you read Fourth Wing and, and?

• 45:28Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  I mean, Fourth Wing is the first one. So I read Fourth Wing first. That was a phenomenon. Onyx Storm is the third book. I will say this. I like them. A lot of shit happens in them and it's a pretty good blend of dragons and kissing.

• 45:46Russ Frushtick?

  Is it, it's steamy?

• 45:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, in a lot of different ways.

• 45:50Russ Frushtick?

  Oh.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Cause there's dragons too.

• 45:53Russ Frushtick?

  Love it. Uh, do we have any honorable mentions?

• 45:58Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I mean, as long as we're talking books, I've been reading the Murderbot Diaries.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're good, right?

• 46:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, they're real fucking good. Martha Wells is a book series. There's seven of these bad boys. I'm almost done with number two. Uh, I've been absolutely just gnawing through these beauties. It's about a robot.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  We have done, I will say this, Griffin, before you go too deep down this hole. I've done this pitch on Besties.

• 46:23Griffin McElroy?

  Oh.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  Within the past few episodes, so.

• 46:25Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, have you?

• 46:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, you could do like a concise version.

• 46:27Griffin McElroy?

  Was I absent for that one?

• 46:28Speaker 00

  Yes, you were absent for that episode.

• 46:30Griffin McElroy?

  Well, then I won't go too deep, but they're great. They're incredibly readable, incredibly likeable, uh, incredibly exciting.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  I hope Martha Wells wasn't listening to that, cause she's probably like, you motherfucker. What a piece of shit. I hate Dustin McElroy so much.

• 46:45Griffin McElroy?

  All right. Well, someone else go while I think of a thing.

• 46:47Russ Frushtick?

  I'm playing, I've been playing The Binding of Isaac.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  Can I, do I get a, do I?

• 46:53Griffin McElroy?

  Do you get a vote on If Russ Can Talk?

• 46:57Speaker 00

  I would love to know. No, I'm desperate to hear more Binding of Isaac. I'm in one of my like, I.

• 47:02Russ Frushtick?

  I'm gonna keep it small. I'm gonna keep it short on Binding of Isaac. I have 10 more achievements to go. Out of 640.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Holy crap.

• 47:11Russ Frushtick?

  It has taken me literally 10 years to get to this point. And it was one of my, as Plant can attest, it was one of my New Year's resolutions to finish this game. So I am closing in on it.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Finish this game. No one has ever used finish this game with that context.

• 47:28Russ Frushtick?

  I'm gonna do.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  That's finished. See, like it's.

• 47:31Russ Frushtick?

  There is a funny thing about Binding of Isaac. I don't think I'm gonna do this, but when you 100% Binding of Isaac, it gives you like a yay, you completed it. But it also changes your save file to say two more to go. And you have to 100% the other two save files to get like a full infinity thing. I'm not gonna do that.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  I really appreciate that.

• 47:52Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I can't wait, uh, to be able to play this in multiplayer. It does support online multiplayer. It's currently in beta. But I would love to, uh, play more. So maybe you guys will join me for my last hurrah. That'd be fun.

• 48:08Chris Plante?

  That would be fun. Um, my, uh, recommendation is, uh, the Super Bowl. Uh, the Kansas City Chiefs are gonna be there this Sunday against the, uh, Philadelphia Eagles. Whoever wins, it's gonna be a great time, but I'm very, very, very, very happy about this. It is bringing me a lot of joy right now.

• 48:26Russ Frushtick?

  How many years they got left? Is this it? Are they gonna be done?

• 48:29Speaker 00

  It has to be, it has to be it for a while after this, right? Like I feel like.

• 48:34Griffin McElroy?

  Said last year.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 48:35Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 48:36Russ Frushtick?

  They should launch a podcast instead. Just do that. Seems pretty.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  They did.

• 48:42Russ Frushtick?

  Well, not all of them.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. They launched a Hallmark movie for God's sake. Um, listen. You guys played old video games?

• 48:50Griffin McElroy?

  Oh shit. What do you want now, Juice?

• 48:52Speaker 00

  Hey, listen, I, I don't know. Having Russ, a good Russ on the show awoke something in me, like something really scary and I.

• 49:00Griffin McElroy?

  Sorry, did you just refer to Russ from Retro Game Core as a good Russ?

• 49:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, he did. No, good Russ, like the definite article, like the good Russ. Um, having, when the good Russ was on, um, the, the, the show, it really unlocked something. I don't know what it is. Something broke deep down in me. And I started really getting deep. So the first thing I made was I showed you guys the piecade. That's like a stand-up arcade cabinet that I, has a Raspberry Pi 4 in it with a hat on top of it that plugs into like the joystick and.

• 49:31Russ Frushtick?

  You say hat like people just know.

• 49:33Speaker 00

  You're right. This hat is like a, sorry, it's been a long week since I didn't know anything about this. So it's like a, um. The Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer. A hat is sort of like interface components that if you put it on will make that computer into something more like the computer that you want. So this little pi-cade hat slid onto the Raspberry Pi and had a place to plug in controllers and a screen and stuff like that.

• 50:03Russ Frushtick?

  When you plugged everything in, did you say finishing the hat?

• 50:07Speaker 00

  No, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't do that. So I did that and I put a bunch of old video games on it. And then that didn't, then my rocks still weren't hard enough. So I decided that I was going to, so basically here's what's in my living room now is a mini PC that I have a jump drive connected via USB that has a Badass Sarah image that I flashed onto the drive that is now the boot image for the mini PC, the boots into the emulation station Badass Sarah that's paired to an 8-bit dough controller in a dock that's behind the TV along with the mini PC.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  So I reached behind my TV, I pulled out a controller and I can play any game ever made.

• 50:55Griffin McElroy?

  And what have you been playing? What have you been playing?

• 50:56Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't play them.

• 50:59Griffin McElroy?

  Too deep, my man.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't play the games, baby. I'm night at the museum, you know what I mean? Like I'm Ben Stiller walking around the Genesis 32X section like looking good tonight, everyone. Keep, keep it in place, girl, girl party. What was the one we played, Griffin?

• 51:18Griffin McElroy?

  Girl party.

• 51:18Speaker 00

  Girl club, girls' club. Remember on the CD?

• 51:22Griffin McElroy?

  I will never forget girls' club.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  The Justin McQuarrie Prize for getting CDI video cartridge emulation running on any sort of like any fashion is still unclaimed, $1,000 in Olive Garden gift certificates are waiting for you. If you can make that happen. But no, I've been playing, I actually, what I messed with a lot is Daphne. This week has been causing me the most consternation because it's a, do you guys know about Daphne? It's a LaserDisc emulator that is very old, like old, old, old thing. But LaserDisc game emulation is really hard because you have to have these LaserDisc video files. And you have to have ROMs, right?

• 52:08Speaker 00

  And the ROMs are basically like both running the game and also telling the game where the video files are that it needs to play. So like, if you think about the ROM for Dragon's Lair, it's actually like this incredibly intricate DVD menu, right? Where like, you can go through the ROM path, but that's the ROM. And then it's cueing you towards, so it's basically like file structure is really important with Daphne's shit because it's pointing to a lot of different places. It's not just one file and each of the different emulators has that in different structures. So you can't have the same file format for like RetroArch that you would have for RetroPi

• 52:51Speaker 00

  because they format the stuff differently on Android or depending on what architecture you're in. So that's what I've been messing with a lot. There's, it's not an advisement. I can't imagine that anybody would want to do this, but I can now play a time traveler, Griffin, on my, on my desktop. Run out of time reversal cubes. I can play Space Ace in 4K on my desktop, but yeah, it's been fun. It's been great. I really have enjoyed collecting those games in a digital format is a lot more pleasurable than it used to be. And much more pleasurable and satisfying, and I will say educational. Like just kind of cruising around with like the ratings and the information on the games and like clips and stuff.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  I really do get the sense of like history when you wander into these like full game collections where the like logos are built out and it feels like you are seeing an entire collection you've never seen before. It really is kind of amazing.

• 53:48Griffin McElroy?

  Um, all my shit is stuff I've talked about before. I leveled up all my guys in Heroes of Hammer Watch 2 and kind of slowed down after that. I don't really feel like pushing new game plus, but that game is still rad and I'm waiting for more stuff to come out for it. I did finish, uh, the root trees are dead.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  Oh, that's good, too. I started that with Sydney this week. That's a great co-op, like play together game.

• 54:12Griffin McElroy?

  I solved it and then I go back to the main menu and it's like, and here's the second one. And they have a whole second mystery.

• 54:20Speaker 00

  No, really?

• 54:21Griffin McElroy?

  Like, everything is different. Like, you get the board from the first one still. You get everything that you did, that you figured out in the first one, but now it's like much later and there's, the board is like twice as big. And now there's a bunch of different, much, much harder stuff to solve.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 54:36Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, and I honestly kind of put a pause on that.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  That's such an amazing game. I've been playing it with Sydney. I will say that I usually find there is a point in each evening at which I'm no longer able to play. The root trees are dead. It becomes incredibly way too complex for me to try to organize and keep in my head. That is like a, it's a lot less casual, I think, than like something like we were doing, uh, Curse of the Golden Idol. And that's a little bit more relaxed. This is very much like, okay, hold on. Wait, I've almost got it. Give me one more second.

• 55:08Griffin McElroy?

  Um, and yeah, I'm still doing my Godot training course. It's still very, very cool. Uh, I get excited now when I see the little Godot icon before, you know, an indie game boots up and start trying to like, figure out how they did all the different shit. It's neat. And that's it.

• 55:28Russ Frushtick?

  Love it. Uh, I wanted to thank some people. We have some members over at the Patreon, uh, Wampa Phil. We have Violence. We have Liv and we have Felicity. Thank you for being patrons. Just for y'all being patrons, we have a new Bracket Battles episode. This one is about the best, I think, weird Nintendo failures.

• 55:50Griffin McElroy?

  The best, I think it's the best Nintendo failure. Is that what we settled on?

• 55:53Russ Frushtick?

  Best weirdo Nintendo failure, something to that effect. Uh, here's a clip from that Bracket Battles episode. You can listen to that right here.

• 56:03Griffin McElroy?

  Both of these, I think, are about, they provide about the same amount of entertainment value.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  That's really true.

• 56:11Griffin McElroy?

  They're both sort of intangible. They're intangible in the same kind of way, which I appreciate. I do think Labo is more fun.

• 56:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Griffin McElroy?

  Which is more weird? I think as a concept, Labo's more weird, but looking at this fucking box art, it's so weird why they made it look like this. It's so weird why they made it look so shitty and not have art from the game Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah.

• 56:39Chris Plante?

  Like, we live in a time now where you make a marketing partnership and then you like reach out to Nintendo and you're like, "Hey, send me over the assets, the original assets," and they send you a big file, right? And that takes five seconds. But back in the day, you're saying, "Hey, I need to get some Mario and Zelda assets." And somebody else is like, "Yeah, I'll reach out to Japan."

• 56:59Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, they're gonna like fly Miyamoto out to like draw a screenshot?

• 57:02Speaker 00

  The phone, like, "Yeah, he's got like a red hat and black hair."

• 57:06Griffin McElroy?

  That is what we were looking at.

• 57:07Chris Plante?

  The green hat, the green hat.

• 57:09Griffin McElroy?

  He's like a little nasty guy. I don't know.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  I don't know, just like...

• 57:15Russ Frushtick?

  That was a fun one. We had a good time doing that one.

• 57:18Chris Plante?

  Also, on Tuesday, we have Arrestees on Big Helmet Heroes, which, hoops, Griffin, we need to get you into this game. They made another Castle Crashers.

• 57:29Russ Frushtick?

  It's basically Castle Crashers.

• 57:30Chris Plante?

  It's just Castle Crashers, but in 3D. It's good stuff.

• 57:35Russ Frushtick?

  It's a lot of fun.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  I thought we told you guys not to have any good games on the Resties.

• 57:39Chris Plante?

  We didn't, we tried not to, and then it ended up being great.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  Dang it.

• 57:43Chris Plante?

  I know.

• 57:44Speaker 00

  "Best laid plans of my submitted do go after I."

• 57:48Chris Plante?

  Uh, also, next week, we have Avowed on Next Besties. Avowed is the new game from Obsidian, the developer best known for games like Fallout New Vegas.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  And that's next week. I hope you'll join us for that because, uh, we want you to. Join us next time for the besties, won't you? Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

• 58:40Speaker 00

  Besties!