Download Link: Released on 2 January 2023
Caspius, SiliconNooB, Mel, and Reetin ring in the New Year with the customary awarding of Christmas Gifts in the form of golden, poo-shaped statuettes, delivered judiciously to the worst company, hardware, and game of the previous year.
The Starlight Megaphone! 
A follow-up survey of our staff and mods has confirmed the (insane) truth that the only person who had intended to purchase Fire Emblem Engage was me. Just me! One person in seven!
On the other hand, absolutely everyone bought Crisis Core and most of them are playing it already, so we’ll have a short(ish) playthrough of that instead. Sorry, Fire Emblem fans!
Note that we normally do a Playthroughs Revisited in the winter, but we’re delaying that until later so that it lines up with some forthcoming remasters/re-releases. Stay tuned!
I imagine if Square Enix made a Dragon Quest I-VI Collection for Switch like they “did” for Final Fantasy, they’d print as many copies as needed and sell them through all the normal means. Look how normally they treated the not-Final Fantasy Live A Live and Tactics Ogre this year, of many things recently. Since those games aren’t under the responsibility of the Final Fantasy Continuing Committe. They treated Crisis Core Recorked normally, perhaps because that’s an action RPG and related to their gaslighting campaign of Final Fantasy VII. They admittedly despise turn-based RPGs and want to discourage and disparage the original FF fans until they go away. They’d rather not have our mone; they’d rather dig the series into diminishing returns than admit there are many fans of both Final Fantasy and turn-based RPGs. They probably have made it “limited” to show the absolutely befuddled “buzzword among businesspeople” president that see, there’s not that many copies sold, no one likes these games! I also speculate that they’re engaging in insider trading and shortselling by driving the company down because they have no good ideas or improvement. If the Continuing Committee gets Naka’d out of S-E then everyone would be better off. They’ve intentionally directly insulted us and given us the middle finger at this point with the physical copy rugpull. Back at you, bastards.
Crisis Core Recorked LOLOLOLOLOL
I have never had such an ‘Oh yeah? Well fuck you too!’ feeling for a company in my life. I thought they were stupid and criminally incompetent before the pixel art physical fiasco. Now I believe, as you comment, that they hate their old fans and want to insult them and exploit them until they are gone.
Just wait for the icing on the cake, guaranteed to piss absolutely everyone off: 6 to 9 months after the Switch/PS release, they will announce a new run of the limited physical edition, so that people who bought it digitally (because that was the only option) will then buy it again. They will be furious.
It will also infuriate people who thought their limited physical edition was very special. And it will infuriate people who paid a ton of money to scalpers for their Very Rare copy. But it will make a lot of money at the expense of an enormous quantity of customer goodwill.
They could’ve just made a bunch of money AND earned goodwill by printing enough physical copies, but goodwill can’t be laundered into a personal bank account.
Without a doubt the worst game I played this year was Diablo Immortal. It’s a damn shame because a mobile execution of a diablo game, it is very well made. But the actual game is a giant pile of garbage. It takes a giant greedy dump and turns the amazing games that were Diablo 1 and 2 into a mobile skinner box.
It is hateful garbage. And it bodes ill.
Every monthly episode reminds me of how this is the most aggressively fantastic podcast out there
I am a huge Fire Emblem fan and I really am not excited about the new game. It kind of seems like it is all about celebrating FE’s history as opposed to being its own game. I have Crisis Core on PSP and never really cared enough to play it so I am excited to participate in another playthrough.
I don’t make it a habit to play crappy games but the first game that came to mind for worst game of the year was Diablo Immortal for the reasons expressed on the podcast.
My concern about the new FE is exactly what you said: it seems to be more about trying to bring in as many previous games of the series as possible then it is about telling its own story. I know there are lots of people out there who like that kind of fan service, but I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with it. Crossover games just don’t hold together at the narrative level.
That’s bad enough when it is the case for a fighting game (e.g. Smash Bros.) where it doesn’t matter, but it’s terrible in an RPG where it is essential.