I played P4G long ago on my PS Vita, bought P5R on Steam a while back and I'm most of the way through it on my Steam Deck right now.
I love the story and the art for P5R but the game is a bit weak as a game, mainly in the way that other turn-based games (a genre I like) tend to be weak. Except for one battle, status effects mostly don't matter (just wait a few turns and they expire) Games with mechanics that don't matter are just so widespread: I think of Fire Emblem games where the weapon triangle doesn't matter because (i) it is so easy to overlevel characters, and (ii) if your characters is overleveled the weapon triangle doesn't matter.
P5R is a crazy long game that doesn't make you make any choices about which social attributes you develop or which characters you befriend, new game plus is unimaginable because the game is so long so you feel you have to do everything which makes the game longer. On top of it the game sets deadlines for you to clear various dungeons which are never challenging to hit.
... and it's not that it is a bad game relative to other games, it's one of the best, but playing through makes think that people need to make something really different in the area of turn-based games mashed up with visual novels such as shorter games that you have to play through to experience everything or games where every mechanic is meaningful. Back in the PS Vita era there were many games where I would really enjoy the NG+ such as Akiba's Trip 2 in which playthoughs got faster and faster as you got stronger or the Neptunia games which had first rate voice acting in two languages and NG+ meant you could enjoy both.
Persona 5 Royal is for all intent and purpose, a side hustle.
https://www.segasammy.co.jp/cms/wp-content/uploads/pdf/en/ir...
Profit, profit, profit. It was a standalone full-price expansion of an existing game. They made stupid money on that release.
https://sccgmanagement.com/sccg-news/2025/5/15/sega-sammy-se...
> Sega Sammy’s new gaming division, which started in mid-2024, became a standout performer. This part of the business includes the US-focused slot machine company Sega Sammy Creation investments in online gaming, and a 45% stake in Paradise City, an integrated resort in South Korea. The division brought in ¥5.4 billion ($36.4 million) in sales and turned a profit, with an EBITDA of ¥1 billion ($6.7 million).
Tails would be a clerk…
Happens a lot.
I’ve used bad redaction to my advantage at work to make money, I’m all for other people using bad redaction techniques :)
Flatten everything to a set of just images.
Have normal human staff draw black boxes over anything to be redacted.
Compose a new 'PDF' that's a set of 'scanned' images.
The image was in PPM format, which stores the color components of the pixels as ASCII text (so a white pixel is stored as "255 255 255" and a black one is "0 0 0"). To redact the image, the code replaced every digit of the numbers with '0', so white became "000 000 000" and black stayed as "0 0 0". Both are black and indistinguishable if you're viewing the image, but you can tell them apart by looking at the file text.
Sadly the UCC homepage seems to have vanished, but I found this account from the author: http://notanumber.net/archives/54/underhanded-c-the-leaky-re...
If it does, then Export to PNG almost certainly removes it (while also removing all other selectable text)
Overall, I kind of understand the paranoia even though in principle it does sound pretty foolproof.
I think if you're really concerned, you'd print it once, apply physical black tape on it (or cut out with a razor), then scan that :)
Possibly depending on the application you use to print and the printer driver. Acrobat has some unexpected behaviours when printing.
You've certainly piqued my curiosity. Can you say any more?
I’ve unredacted proposals using the ‘unflatten’ command in Bluebeam Revu (which is by far the best PDF editor) which allowed me to underbid my competitor and win the job (and at a higher price than I would’ve submitted).
Definitely an ethical grey area, but an edge is an edge ;)
I'd not do this if I were you.
There are zero legal implications, it was a private contract. My customers regularly tell me the exact price that my competitors have submitted to them and that isn’t illegal.
Probably there are legal implications for attorneys circumventing redaction in legal documents but construction proposal letters have no protections against unredaction.
Legally, I can't see what's wrong with using information that you have, even if the other party didn't intend for you to have it. Lawyers themselves will use information in court that was accidentally sent to them by a counter-party, and that the other lawyer never intended them to have.
But how would they prove it? And, doing so would reveal that they fucked up in the first place by sending it to you.
There are billions of PDF files out there, but the ones are being redacted are the most valuable of the lot.
I’m surprised even more at the P5R sales! I might actually have to give it a real try— tried it a couple years ago (P5 non-R) and didn’t really take to it, but I was put off by the whole anime vibe.
There have been ongoing movies and tv shows so each generation of kids grows up with Sonic.
I think there's something about Sonic's face that is timeless, innate, prehistoric even.
Sonic wins on aesthetics and style while Mario is popular entirely because of the quality of the games that have cemented Mario as timeless.
That means they're both QTE based?
Executing the action, dodging and parrying, and shooting ranged weapons all happen in real time.
It works really well in practice, combining both strategic and twitch gameplay.
I might agree with the former but I don't like false advertising.
Clair Obscur’s combat would be better described as dodge and parry based as that is the primary mechanic. In terms of lineage, the combat is much closer to PunchOut than Final Fantasy 6.
It’s really fun if that is what you are expecting though.
"Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a ground-breaking turn-based RPG with unique real-time mechanics, making battles more immersive and addictive than ever."
Turns out the real time mechanics aren't unique. Not sure I want "addictive" battles or "addictive" gameplay either. Isn't that the realm of free to play?
I still don't understand how "addictive" is a positive term.
[1] To preempt some complaining, I haven't touched an Ubisoft or EA title in at least 10 years. So it's not like I'm an AAA "consumer" that skips the darling indies.
So it's not addictive in the ongoing, problematic way that cocaine would be.
Personally, I killed Simon on my second try by rebuilding my party to intentionally die to his attacks, proc some key Luminas and trigger the start of a high damage combo. The game rewards creative builds and lateral thinking.
> It’s amazing how valuable of an IP Sonic is. It still sells consistently well after all those years.
It’s not as surprising when you consider Sonic is also mascot who they’ve ploughed millions into.
The movies will have definitely reignited some interest into Sonic too
That's more like it
They’re not even in the same league as Nintendo, Disney, Lego, etc. And when you look at other games companies from the same era (Capcom, Atari, etc) then you’d see that Sega are still releasing original content too vs the same rehashed shit that people buy purely because of the name.
Then on the other end of the spectrum you have companies buying studios and letting those games rot (like EA). Studios encouraging micro-transactions (Microsoft with Minecraft, EA, Roblox, Epic, etc) and even underage gambling with loot boxes. Shit that has no place in gaming. It’s Also Sega are one of the least aggressive companies out there “defending” their IP against fan-made content.
Sega are a massively underrated brand in today’s gaming landscape.
Any other decent Atari rehashes are pure lagniappe.
Much as I dislike the modern era EA, it’s hard to argue that their Football / Soccer games are duds. And EA have always been liberal about their branding so everyone knew that FIFA was an EA game.
It's the same reason for the decade-long glut of capeshit. Hollywood found that (people who were then) teenage boys could be relied upon to show up for a superhero film, no matter how bad, provided it starred their favourite characters.
People continually buy the next EA sports game even though it’s basically just the old game but with the year incremented.
People still spend £50 on new copies of 10 year old Nintendo games like Mario Kart 8. And let’s be honest, the last great Mario game released was Super Mario Galaxy.
If there’s one thing you can guarantee, it’s that people will waste their money on stuff they like. And if there is one truism that HN commentators forget, it’s that software doesn’t need to be academically perfect to be good software for their particular target audience. In the case of games, it’s being more enjoyable than the alternative of not playing that game. Which, frankly, is a pretty low bar a lot of the time.
Most people don’t want to spend large amounts of time “getting good” and don’t enjoy getting matched up against players that absolutely destroy them, but instead prefer more casual games against other players with middling skills. The thing is though, even if highly competitive games include an unranked queue intended for casuals, it ends up being filled with smurfs[0] and the like looking to smash lower skilled players, which drains the fun from the game for those players. Thinking about it that way, it’d make perfect sense if the most popular PvP games would be those that are shunned by the highly competitive - a lack of “pro” players might be considered a feature rather than a bug.
[0]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/17209/where-does...
Normal players would like to participate in the progression systems you design! Having a ranked queue that is uninviting to normal players due to skill, and an unranked queue that is uninviting to everyone due to progression design, but less uninviting to normal players than the ranked queue, is a pretty suboptimal result.
It's lately become a lot more popular to just secretly (or at least stealthily) put people in with bots. Marvel Snap was really successful at emulating opponents at low ranks and gradually increasing real opponent density the higher you are. Battle Royale games with 100 players per game can easily add a bunch of bots so you aren't at the bottom and can even win. I noticed Mario Kart World also has bots in most knockout matches (and I highly appreciate that it is transparent about this fact.)
This is to say nothing of the rampant cheating in the game, which if a person ever gets banned for, there is nothing stopping them from just spending 10$ on a replacement account.
It’s rare for any product to have more success in later invocations than the first edition, that is where the narrative is fresh and strong- and even in the event sequels are stronger, they tend to increase sales of the first season/movie/etc; because people want the whole experience.
Story-based content is what struggles with sequels because it's really hard to both capture the feeling of the original sufficiently to satisfy existing fans while also telling a new story that's interesting in its own right. Being derivative without being too derivative.
I don't think it's ever really been true that video game sequels sucked. Maybe Zelda 2 and to a lesser extent Mario 2 - but game developers seem to break new ground on sequels a lot. In fact I think sequels have been better than originals more often than not throughout game history.
For one thing it may just be more common for the first to not reach its full audience.
But my experience as a game developer is also that, when you start out making a new game, you probably kinda suck at making that game. Games sometimes suck for most of their development until they suddenly get good near the end.
And by the end, you get really good at making that specific game. A lot of game design has to come together to enlighten further game design decisions, and you really come to know what's fun by the end of it. Not to mention the technology you build for it!
A sequel allows the same team to build on the shoulders of the first game, keeping what worked, adding features that players missed and refining those that didn’t work. It’s seen as a safer investment, with an existing fan base to leverage, and so this often leads to larger development and marketing budgets with a focus on growth.
I think the margin is usually 70%~ but depends a lot I guess.
You can safely bet that >50% of people who enjoyed seeing/playing the first of something would be interested in the second.
If you want a great story, it is weak. Looking for a great tactics game, it is weak. The combination of gameplay styles is a ridiculous ride, but I can see how the genre mashup has limited appeal.
Was probably strategically smart to reboot the series a bit with Kasuga. Makes it a bit more approachable.
- where do I start? There's a dozen titles and no clear entry point
- supposedly the series' genre changed over time? So if you like it in one game it might be a different game in a sequel
- it looks weirdly unserious? Like much of the advertising focuses on doing bizarre side activities rather than any actual plot-driven message
- all this on top of having a very non-traditional environment for an RPG which already is a bit of a hurdle in messaging what the game will be like
It's just very unclear from the outside how to get started with this series, and what I'll get if I do pick one to try.
The games are a mashup of genres, but it is only the latest one which leans so heavily into the RPG aspects. Prior installments are more "fist fight dudes" core gameplay.
The main character essentially hallucinates that he's a character in dragon quest and the bad guys you encounter at first look normal but transform into "sujimon"/monsters during encounters.
The core gameplay is really fun, the writing is top notch (first like a dragon > infinite wealth tho), character classes/"jobs" picked out at an unemployment center are fun/funny, your "mage" is a homeless guy who summons pigeons to attack and uses a bottle of alcohol which he spews into a lighter to cast flames, and the mini games are just there if you want to play them and many are fun.
Pretty much any other Yakuza game you're going to see will be more action-focused and have real-time battles, but still with RPG elements. Yakuza 0 is a commonly-suggested starting point for the action-based entries or the series as a whole; it's a prequel but one that still works well as a place to start.
But, either way, the average user likely isn't using an adblocker; how have we got to this stage where a website is more ads than content?
> These retro SEGA games are now free on Android (and iOS) until they disappear forever
https://www.androidauthority.com/sega-retro-games-android-fr...
[1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/retro-rings-sonic-cd-hits-i...
[2] https://powerupgaming.co.uk/2016/10/27/sonic-cd-goes-free-to...
Edit: Looks like the "end of life" version (4.0?) disables the ads but keeps the bloat which is better than I hoped for.
Depressing how ephemeral and consumable everything is
This is a much better outcome than most games or software that is discontinued.
Who are the 7 million people going out to buy the 20th Persona game? What are you actually hoping to get from it that isn't just a slight variance on something you've already had multiple times before?
I have friends genuinely excited to go buy Mario Cart for the 17th time this year... Once you've made two objects move along an enclosed route at differing speeds and slapped Nintendo marketing on top hasn't the game play evolved as much as possible?
Could the money not be better spent coming up with new and interesting concepts rather than copy pasting the same stuff out every 12-18 months?
It's because they change: They tell new stories. They look better. They play better. They introduce completely new mechanics.
Persona: we're up to 5 in 25 years (almost 30 now!), during which time we've seen a massive increase in compute on consoles. Having a new game every 5 years seems very reasonable.
It’s such an absurdly bad take they can’t be serious.
In football anybody in the world who has legs and can walk can perform the main goal of football which is to get a ball into a very large net. It doesnt take any skill to perform the feat whatsoever. The skill only comes with who you choose to play against. From that angle, it is just 20 people chasing a ball around, it just depends on the skill level of the players as to whether that is interesting to you or not.
With programming, not everybody with fingers can achieve the end goal which is to write working software. It takes years of learning and practice to be able to make even the most basic piece of software, whereas my 2 year old child can reliably kick a ball into a net.
The difference between the two is that football, and sport in general, creates enjoyment by intense moments of tension and excitement in a small space of time. Programming is an intellectual activity, where its payoff is in solving mathematical and logical puzzles to achieve a goal. Its not far fetched to see that people who get enjoyment from one type thing might not enjoy the other.
Why does everybody have to enjoy everything?
The people denigrating football are referring to the Premier League, La Liga, etc. It’s nothing to do with skill and everything to do with snobbery.
> It takes years of learning and practice to be able to make even the most basic piece of software, whereas my 2 year old child can reliably kick a ball into a net.
You’re starting to sound like those people.
> Why does everybody have to enjoy everything?
I didn’t say you did, all I said was that it’s a sad cultural behaviour that I’ve seen to denigrate things other people enjoy.
I don’t even watch football that much, I picked it because of its popularity.
Of course someone there is looking at the balance sheet and noticing that recycling is actually profitable so who can blame them if we want to keep repurchasing the shinier version of the thing we liked before?
Then I suppose we have ourselves to blame — or not.
I suspect the OP though is bemoaning the lack of new, original ideas that this kind of commerce workflow eschews. (Myself, I'm not into first person shooters and so essentially walked away from mainstream gaming decades ago.)
> It's because they change
That's not true at all. I don't return to the same great restaurant because it's new and different. If I wanted that, I'd look for a different restaurant.
I go back to the same great restaurant because I'm hungry again.
Now if i had 17 unique paintings exploring a variety of motifs and styles, each one with a story to tell that would actually be worth talking about.
Then I’d compliment your ability to create a flowing theme throughout the house.
The problem with your analogy here is that art for the home (or anywhere outside a museum or gallery) is generally bought to compliment the overall aesthetics of the building, rather than to be enjoyed in isolation.
> Now if i had 17 unique paintings exploring a variety of motifs and styles, each one with a story to tell that would actually be worth talking about.
That’s called “eclectic”, which is basically an artsy way of saying “mismatched”. Some people dig that style. Personally I don’t.
Who are the millions of people who watch, for the 20th time in their life, how Character A does something unrealistically stupid, ends up in an awkward situation, and then spend the rest of the episode being continuously teased over it by other characters, because they're all written to be slightly stupid and low-key assholes.
This is not to criticize sitcoms and reality shows (and people watching them) here, but rather to point out that the same phenomenon you described also manifests with vastly more popular forms of entertainment, so there must be something to enjoying the experience beyond sheer originality.
NBC and Nintendo, no evolution or original thought. Just copy paste it to the masses because its all the seem to want anyway based on this thread.
Maybe im wrong for demanding more....
Evolution and original stuff are amazing and we should want them to exist. To be disappointed because we also have stuff that isn't like that is to turn a blind eye to what makes up a lot of our life.
The reality is that there is room for studios to release original content AND sequels.
For every Star Wars and Marvel rehash there is a Big Hero 6, Elementals, and Zootopia.
And for every Nintendo there are a dozen indie games studios releasing creative new games.
The key to avoiding rehashes is literally just to avoid them. ;)
In some ways this is the optimal way for a video game company to innovate as they need ROI (people don't generally buy new IPs in high numbers even if they're really good and it often takes a couple of installments to build trust and sales!) so creating new gameplay out of trusted IPs is a good way of achieving that.
However, every new Mario Kart game is genuinely distinct from its predecessor. You can show me any screenshot of any Mario Kart game, and I will immediately be able to identify what version it is.
Have you considered that you may just be very out of touch?
Religion is really the worst offender. Same service with same text time after time, year after year. Like they do not even take effort to mix it up every couple years or rewrite it...
Surely there is at least one thing that you enjoy in your life that is fairly similar across iterations.
People are excited to buy new cloths, even though they're "just a slight variance on something you've already had multiple times before".
They love to try out the new hyped-up food stand, even though the hotdog will be just a slight variance on all the hotdogs they had before.
Video games don't wear out, you can still play the same software you bought in 2003 today.
Not to mention, for Perosna in particular, each Perosna game tells a whole new story, so buying the fifth one is like going to see the fifth movie in a franchise: you know you like the style, and you want to experience a new story in this style. It's also not even a very long series - compare to Final Fantasy, for example, which will soon get its 17th main game (probably more like 25th or something if you included spinoffs).
The way you perceive them does, at least did back in 2023 (or 2013) and earlier.
You pick up, say, original Half Life or something from that time; story-wise it's the same game you remember, but in terms of experience, is nigh-unplayable in its original form now, because you already experienced how decades of progress in videogames look like. Not just in terms of graphics, though that is a big part, but also in terms of UI! Properly mapped controls and GUI behaviors are alone worth looking up/waiting for a remake. And/or, the Nth installment of a game in the same universe.
Every good game has odd control schemes, that doesn't mean it's worn out.
IMO the quality of games has gone greatly downhill, and when I pick up something old like Doom 3, Half Life 2, or Portal, I am staggered by how good they are in comparison to most of the unity based slop which currently passes for games.
I last played Mario Kart on Nintendo Wii and enjoyed it. That's 17 years ago. I'll probably buy one of the newer versions at some point. And it will be very different from the game I played.
I know people who rewatch the same TV series every year and go to the same vacation every year.
Fear of change is deep.
Myself, I'm quite open to new forms of entertainment, as well as those previously unknown to me. Even within my favorite genres, I'm more than happy to explore - but I'm still gonna rewatch at least one Star Trek show each year.
It doesn't matter that I've seen most of those show 6-10 times each over the course of my life; it doesn't matter that I've watched some specific episodes 20+ times already. What matters to me is, each time I see those characters and those locations, it feels like coming home.
(And more so than actually coming home.)
People anchor to different things like this, not just TV shows. Sometimes it's a real place (or an event in that place - e.g. vacation), sometimes it's a club, sometimes it's a video game or an outdoor hobby.
The American version? Same but with more advertisements for pharmaceuticals.
I think that's more an issue with the specific rules/players/fans though, I've not had a problem watching multiple matches of other sports in a day.
And even if a "new and interesting concept" turns up, it's is too bothersome to learn for them. That's why once they find the fun in one thing, they tend to stick to it and be blind to others.
Play Persona 5 Royal, then Persona 1. Tell us it's the same game and everybody would think you are crazy. Hell, even Persona 5 Royal is way better than Persona 5 in a lot of ways...
Maybe you are satisfied by only trying out completely new things—if they even exist—but most people don't.
Why do you have such a problem with other people enjoying that type of content?
Everything in life can be much more complicated and nuanced if you put an effort in it as reality has infinite amount of details. There is a lot of value in refining successful concepts.
Also a lot of “new and interesting concepts” turn out not to be that useful or that interesting like not that many people listening to experimental music or reading novels whose writers think they are smarter than everyone else.
For someone else, it might be reading Hacker News.
For you, it’s video games.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with differences of opinion, even to the point of bewilderment, but it doesn’t feel productive to question people’s interests and reduce them to, frankly, disingenuous levels of oversimplification.
I think one of the more beautiful parts of the internet is how we can be connected and talk about our differences and understand each other better. But it does not seem like you are truly attempting to understand, instead your posts read more like “looking down one’s nose,” which isn’t fruitful or productive for anyone.
Maybe I am mistaken! If so, I’d like to encourage you to try to reach understanding of others without depicting them as “mad” or financially wasteful or simple-minded.
[1] though my favorite time doing it was catching smelt on the docks on the back side of the barrier island at Hampton Beach with my grandparents and bringing back enough to fill the freezer
I agree with the responders that this is a common fallacy (good insights / learnings for us all). Eg I like following baseball but if you were to ask me about it 10 years ago I’d be pretty reductive about. I agree with the responders that there’s beauty in the seemingly little things at first that build. That said not all of us take the time to appreciate certain areas of beauty because there’s a lot of beauty out there. And that’s ok but nature does seem to indicate repetition and variation are fine.