Grangle1

I kinda feel bad for Lance because it kinda feels like he wasn't given a chance at all before the Niners went on this little episode of QB confusion. He had one game where he played good but not great and they're already acting like they're done with him because Purdy got fans energized.

Vikings fan. Agreed.

One. One single Engage character. I know Engage didn't sell as well as Three Houses (I vastly prefer Three Houses myself), but IS really doesn't need to try to bury it like it doesn't exist. If they're concerned about reception among fans, from what I've seen it's still not the worst received in the series (that "honor" goes to Fates, IIRC), the gameplay holds up even if the story doesn't very well. Three Houses is the best selling and possibly the most critical and fan favorite game in the franchise. It would be a tough act for any of the other games to follow. Not selling as well or getting as warm a reception as your franchise's #1 game is not automatically a failure.

Basically "embrace, extend, extinguish" in a nutshell.

I just noticed she's making the same exact face in all three panels, just from different perspective. That said, that face is just screaming to be put on a sticker or an emoji/icon somewhere.

Wouldn't the Japanese model also have a much larger library of games available and be able to use the RAM carts to boost performance?

If Platinum was the last game you've played, and you are willing to pick up a Switch, Legends Arceus is a great choice. It's set in the past of the Sinnoh region, features a somewhat decent amount of newer Pokémon, has a good story overall, and is generally agreed upon to be the best Pokémon game of generation 8. The semi-open world and ability to catch Pokemon without battling them (featuring stealth mechanics) make for unique and fun gameplay for the series. You can even complete the pokedex all on one cart without needing to trade.

If you want to pick up a "mainline" non-spinoff game, no better place to jump in than the current generation, in this case Scarlet/Violet. It's the game with the most current stuff going on and with the most active community. Most of the complaints about it are about the graphics and framerate/performance on the Switch hardware, but many also say that despite the performance issues these are the best mainline games in the series from story and gameplay standpoints. There's a lot of online bickering among fans who are both positive and negative on the gen 9 games, but I would say watch some YouTube or Twitch videos of gameplay preferably without commentary to see what the games are like and make up your own mind on it before paying for a Switch and the game.

I just started the other day, so about 4. 😋 Just got to the Temple of Time, so assuming I'm about to leave tutorial island.

Hope so, just for the sake of IS not having forgotten Engage exists, even if they're in alt hell.

Over a LIFETIME, sure, they will make more. But especially in that past 20 years I've been mentioning, they start out with that debt holding them back, and it's been more difficult for an increasing amount of people over time, due to the economic difficulties and the rising balance and interest of those loans due to exponentially ballooning costs of that education plus inflation, to both pay that debt back and establish a career and stable life that makes that increased earning possible. Most of that increased earning comes later in life for many, and payment on those loans can only be deferred so far. Millions of borrowers are putting off auto and home purchases and even marriage and starting families because their student debt is causing them to not afford such life milestones, because even jobs that require degrees do not pay enough early in one's career to afford it; the increased earning is back-loaded, and really I would not be surprised if it's also weighted heavily towards those who were already wealthy and could afford to not have to take out loans for their education, even for advanced degrees that will add on even more to their income. Further, with the value of a degree dropping due to employers focusing on experience over education and the increasing labor market with degrees, that income gap is also likely to drop pretty fast, and that drop I'm value is also likely to hit the grads from lower-income backgrounds who had to take out large amounts of loans much more than the wealthy who likely already had the right connections to get around experience requirements on top of not having to go into debt for their degree. They're not the ones benefiting from this policy; it's the ones who struggle despite their degrees, who are possibly hampered economically even more than the folks who didn't go to college at least during the vital years when they should be able to establish themselves, who would be the main people who benefit.

It's never been a guarantee that a college degree will put someone in the highest class of wage earners, especially for anyone who's gone to school basically since the turn of the millennium. College tuition and fees have been rising far beyond inflation and wage growth throughout the 21st century so far, without corresponding increase in starting wages for college grads to meet that rise, and with that increase in tuition and fees, more and more students have needed larger and larger loans to pay that cost. Especially for those who went to college in the 2000s, 17-18 year olds could not have predicted that the economy would go to crap (the Great Recession) by the time they graduated, or that new grads would be most hurt by it as companies handed the jobs that would normally go to those new grads to experienced workers who had been laid off, preventing those new grads from gaining the valuable experience and connections that could get them into their industries. Since then the relative value of a college degree has only continued to drop, as those companies continue to shift to valuing experience over education in their hiring practices. New college students and grads can see that now and make better decisions, but back in the 2000s, when those loans that are out there now were taken out, could you really blame a high school kid for not being an expert economist or HR pro enough to figure that would happen? Too many people think of late millennial-Gen Z people when they think of student debt burden, but the largest portion of it is actually held by late Gen X-early Millennials who are paying for the education they got in the 2000s and essentially got shafted on those opportunities they were sold on when they went to the school everyone told them they HAD to go to. (Full disclosure, I am one of those early Millennials.) Biden made a dumb decision by trying to use a law aimed at mitigating COVID economic effects to solve a problem mainly caused by the Great Recession, but it's still a problem that needs to be solved to essentially prevent an American Lost Generation from forming.

Game Sack is a long-running channel that's one of the best retro game channels IMO. They release a video every week or two. MetalJesusRocks and his endless quest for Hidden Gems is also very good.