Because what's the point of having portals to another dimension if you can't go there?
how it works is he actually has access to go to the Punch Dimension, but since the place is just made of pure energy, anytime a portal is opened energy is realeased.
Since the energies there can't hurt him OR his brothers, they go there to test out the limitations of their powers.
From that dimension he can open portals to other places. This is much like how Kurt teleports via the Brimstone dimension
So this is part of my 'Lost Memories AU' where Urd - one of the three norns is cast out during one of the resets and now runs an orphanage in Alaska. Since she is the norn of the past, her powers include memory.
💬 0 🔁 18 ❤️ 109 · Red (2016)
Made this one years ago for a canon compliant (at the time) AU. Where Scott Summers (Cyclops) unlocks his
The children she is in charge of are actually just vessels where she can temporarily store Lost Memories - since Scott has had a lot of his memories forcibly removed and altered via telepathy, he (and his brothers) are permanent fixtures in her orphanage.
Also known as my 'Loki is father of the Phoenix force AU'
💬 0 🔁 3 ❤️ 5 · Post by @cypreus-and-willow · 1 image · Can I ask for more on that X-Men centric AU, with the 3 Summers brothers and Loki b
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you used to be able to go onto a tag after finishing a movie and see all sorts of gifsets. now you have to comb through reader insert fanfiction. we used to be a society
Clearing up my phone and found these. Something something about the ability to show kindness to everyone but ourselves.
Time stamp on this says 2022 - it's when Kaito was feeling like he was a bad older brother.
And then 2024, I replayed the game for like an hour just to find this line bc I know Shuuji says it to Takuma as well.
Bro can't read the room but the first thing he does is try to reassure them.
One of my favourite things in media is when a character describes another character. And a few times in the game Takuma (and I think Aoi??) describes him as kind, patient, etc can't remember the exact words.
Obv that kindness rapidly dwindles during the game but IT'S STILL THERE all tattered and in pieces.
And then when Takuma post part 5 looks at him being soft and making GOOD DECISIONS and effectively says "that's the Shuuji I remember" I'm crying on my knees
TLDR; I was actively looking for moments like these bc I was like 'the soft spoken boy we met earlier in the game is disappearing' and then he'd say stuff like this.
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While we continue to donate to personal evacuation funds, I think it is crucial to keep in mind that these individuals as well as millions more in Gaza are currently actively in need of basic necessities like food, water, shelter, and medical care. Keeping this in mind, and recognising that there is no way to know when the border crossing with Egypt will reopen, I think our attention should also be on raising funds for organisations currently on the ground who will have the widest impact on the lives of Palestinians who are still enduring the genocide in Gaza.
Below are some verified donation links of organisations that are currently providing assistance for the people in Gaza directly:
Food, water, and shelter
Taawon has launched a campaign to provide support in Gaza through food parcels, shopping vouchers, fresh produce, water bottles and shelter tents.
Watermelon Relief is a project initiated and implemented by a group of activists in Gaza, who work to provide aid to displaced families in Gaza through meals, support and activities.
World Food Programme (WFP) managed to provide assistance to more than 1 million people in Gaza in May by delivering food in shelters, makeshift camps and shops.
Life for Gaza is an initiative through which the Municipality of Gaza aims to provide basic necessities for the people of Gaza such as water projects, waste collection and the reconstruction of roads.
Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN) is working to plant farmlands in Gaza through their "Revive Gaza Farmlands" project, through which they had already started planting vegetables, fruits and leafy greens in Gaza.
Purchasing eSIMs is one of the only remaining ways to keep Gazans connected with the outside world, to get their stories out or even enable them to call for help after Israeli strikes.
The Sameer Project is a donation based aid initiative that provides tents, cash aid, diapers and formula for displaced families in Gaza.
Care For Gaza is an organisation that works to provide essential aid such as food packages and cash to deliver to displaced families in Gaza.
Palestine Children's Relief Fund, through their "Gaza Relief and Recovery" campaign, plan to provide essential medical supplies and treatments, as well as food and clean water.
The UNRWA has an Emergency Appeal for Gaza, where donations will provide families in Gaza with lifesaving food and water, winter kits and to repair UNRWA shelters.
Mutual Aid for the People of Gaza is a fundraiser managed by Mona in Gaza, who personally purchases and distributes basic supplies including food parcels to families in Gaza.
Help Gaza Children is another grassroots effort operating on the ground in Gaza to support families with food, water and clothing.
Medical care
Palestinian Red Crescent has been on the ground in Palestine since 1968 as part of the Red Cross & Crescent movement. They have had a continuous presence on the ground in Gaza as the main source of medical care and assistance.
Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) provides medical supplies and supports healthcare services in Gaza.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) provide medical and humanitarian aid in Palestine and have had their teams on the ground operating from MSF-supported health facilities across Gaza.
Gaza Wound Care is a medical team in a tent in Nuseirat, providing care to children and supporting pregnant women.
Children Not Numbers is an NGO dedicated to providing medical care for the children in Gaza including delivery of medical aid and medical evacuation for children.
Scenario: a sample of your DNA was taken, popped into a cell, and cloned into a baby, gestated in a sci-fi artificial womb vat. The first time you or anyone in your family meets this baby is after it has already been born out of said vat. You can hold the newborn if you want, it's up to you, but it is a living breathing baby that was cloned from your DNA and is genetically identical to you.
What relation to yourself do you consider this clone baby?
This clone baby is my child
This clone baby is my sibling
This clone baby is like. a cousin or a relative. but not my child or sibling
This clone baby is some random stranger that happens to share my DNA
I have some other nuanced feeling about my relationship to this clone baby
Voting ended onSep 22, 2024
I love clone philosophy. Give me all your philosophy of clones
Originally posted to Twitter - I guess this is the extended edition.
Well… I told myself I cant write think pieces but if I'm gonna think this much, I might as well put it on tumblr 🤣
In short:
Oldest & youngest of main cast
Younger siblings to older brothers
Leaves home to prove they can make it on their own
And then there's:
Self blame
Loss of identity
Anger in place of grief
But mostly when Shuuji defends his brother, Miu is the only one who GETS IT.
Younger siblings to older brothers
They’re both youngest siblings that don't always get along with their older brother. But the difference is in how they clash. First time we meet Kaito, his description of her is already so far off from the Miu we see at the start. Small, timid and scared is how he sees her. Already, there is a clash of ideals on who she is and who she wants to be vs how Kaito sees her and how he's projecting that image onto her. This leads to some pretty explosive fights between the two, as Miu refuses to mold herself according to how Kaito wants her to behave. Even if it's for her own protection. Whereas Shuuji tries to mold himself into whatever his dad wants him to be. Even to his own detriment.
With the brothers, we never meet the older Kayama but Shuuji first mentions him at the amusement park in line with how we reunite the in-game siblings. In the conversation, he tries to reassure Kaito that not being able to know what Miu is thinking at all times does not mean he is lacking as an older brother. He's speaking from the perspective of the younger who holds his brother in high regard despite telling us they don't get along.
It's no secret that Miu is bothered by Kaito’s behaviour and is not afraid to call him out on it. Kaito of course is openly upset to which Shuuji says he's jealous that Miu and Kaito have this kind of relationship. We learn that he and his brother don't even fight since his brother doesn't 'stoop that low'. Where the Shinonome siblings clash, for the brothers there is simply nothing there (in terms of airing out and fixing your problems).
Living in a household where siblinghood is treated like a competition rather than a source of support, there is a distance caused by that 'competition'. Like he says to Agumon, it's not as simple as liking or disliking your sibling.
(Can I just say, I love Agumon's innocent yet intrusive questions. Takuma too, but he's a bit more passive and sometimes beats around the bush. Probably a learned human behaviour lol)
I don't know how to put it but that scene where he's telling Miu and Kaito to stop fighting and get along, and he gets told that is how they get along kinda made me sad. He's never had a proper fight with his older brother so they've never had their problems laid out in the open. By now, the game hints at a sibling rivalry fueled by the feelings he holds for his dad which in game calls a 'complicated relationship'. Any visible fighting is probably stopped because it's bothersome. No one else seems bothered by the Shinonome sibling rivalry and Shuuji's genuine confusion at how this is allowed, and deemed ok shows that being silenced is the norm in the Kayama household, and not talking about your problems is 'getting along'.
Leaves home to prove they can make it on their own
Kaito tries to protect Miu by threatening anything that might hurt her with physical violence. Telling her to 'get behind me' a couple times in the game. Shuuji's brother takes on the tasks their dad demands of Shuuji (whether or not this is to protect him or shut him up, I don't know. It feels like both). They might be well meaning, but this leaves Miu and Shuuji are incapable and can't be trusted to do anything on their own. That they're weak and lacking.
For Miu, it causes her to avoid her brother. To get away from his ‘helicopter parenting’. We first see her I'm the prologue having run away from home. A straw doll taking her place in bed. Clearly she's been planning this for a while.
Side Note: I want to point out that Kaito is dealing with their parent’s perceived betrayal. I don’t remember if they talk much about their life before the incident but it could be that they had a relatively normal life - one their parents are willing to put on a facade to keep that image of a normal happy family. (I don’t know if it’s intentional but even their family make up is father, mother, son, daughter - dynamics usually depicted as ‘normal families’ in children’s media). Whatever idyllic family life they might have had is shattered by an incident beyond their daughter's control. And what do they do? They move to a place where nobody knows what happened, where they can pretend it never even happened.
From Kaito’s perspective, this is not good enough (he's right) and he has had to step up. Is he being overprotective or just compensating for his parent’s lack of action? Anyway, he's trying to be a parent without knowing how to be a parent is what I'm saying.
For Shuuji, it's a bit more clear-cut as he does make mention of trying to prove himself a few times. In his prologue story, we get to see his motivations for joining the campers. He's there to prove himself capable.
Saki mentions that it's stifling to be so coddled and I'm sure she either says this to Kaito or about Kaito.
They attempt to gain independence from their brothers. Both want to be 'stronger', to prove that they can do things on their own w/o being coddled by their brothers.
This is technically part 1 as there's a next section that's a bit harder for me to post... I've written it, but since they're sensitive topics I find myself self-censoring a lot. And I cant post it as it is.
In the besieged lands of Gaza, the search for drinking water unfolds as a tragic odyssey of endurance and deprivation. Every step taken to procure this fundamental necessity is laden with hardship and uncertainty. Families embark on wearying journeys, traversing long distances in pursuit of a simple sip of water. Yet, the wells of health and purity run dry, as contamination and scarcity cast a shadow over their quest. The echoes of war reverberate through their struggle, rendering the act of securing clean and uncontaminated water a poignant reminder of the entrenched suffering that defines life in Gaza.
I am Amna Marwan, 32 years old, I live in Gaza, married and a mot… Amna Merwan needs your support for “Save my Children from the horro
Verified by @90-ghost
" the loss of the right to education for my children. "
During the war, I experienced a million awful feelings.
I felt the loss of my frie
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Islam Al-Najjar I hesitated and delayed for a long time in writing these words and creating an account on GoFundMe, but the need has become very urgent because of what I see of the approaching death of myself and my family. I insisted on detailing and explaining more and more about my family in order to show you the whole picture and for you to know the extent of my suffering and need.
To begin our story, it is important for me to know my family, which is the core of my existence and the source of my strength during these difficult times: We are a family of six people who have been suffering for more than 10 months from a brutal war that does not spare people or stones.
We were living quietly in our wonderful and humble house with trees and nature around us. However, the war destroyed everything and we have nothing left. Unfortunately, we are still searching for a suitable shelter to continue living
A picture of our house before and after the war
Mother: The heart of our home My mother
embodies generosity and kindness as a devoted housewife, and always gives priority to the well-being of her family. My mother was a school teacher who did what she had to produce an educated generation. She is now unable to continue her work due to the war
Father: Pillar of strength My father, Marwan, faced the real pain of being the first responsible for protecting us, but there is no protection in light of this war. He lost more than 35 kilograms due to grief, oppression, and lack of food.
This is a picture of my family- my mother, father and sisters
The only brother: Aser My brother Aser, an engineer, graduated from the university a few days before the war and was not happy about his graduation because the war ended his dreams that he had and was in the process of building. He cannot work now because of the war.
My picture with my brother Aser
As for myself,
I am Islam As for me, the eldest of my sisters, I was on the cusp of a new beginning after I finished university, majoring in physical therapy. I obtained an honors degree, as a 27-year-old person looking forward to independence and work to continue my career in physical therapy. After I graduated from university, I worked specifically to help people with disabilities who needed a physical therapist, and I had the tools in the picture before you. The war came and destroyed all of these tools. It not only destroyed my professional dreams, it destroyed my home, which I was trying to beautify. The war consumed everything I had collected. I saved it from my work. I dreamed of traveling abroad and developing myself in the field of physical therapy, but unfortunately this has not happened yet.
This is my picture before and after the war
My name is Islam Al-Najjar, a 27-year-old Palestinian from… Islam Najjar needs your support for From the Ashes: A Call for Humanity to Re
This is my grandfather. He was injured by the occupation many years ago and is still suffering from this injury. We are taking care of him because he cannot carry out his duties alone.
Now we hope to escape death, we hope the war will end, we hope to leave the Gaza Strip to continue our lives in all calm and peace, we hope to live a decent life away from bombing, occupation and destruction.
Today, my family and I are suffering from a lack of medicine, food, and health care. We are losing a lot of weight due to the lack of food. Everything here is expensive and we cannot buy it. Other than that, we are now homeless and without a place to shelter us. Insects are everywhere and rodents are too. This is very terrible.
The cost of rebuilding the house requires ,It costs a lotand the eviction fees are expensive, especially since I do not have any source of income. Once we are able to evacuate, your donations will cover the construction of our home, our travel expenses and help us get immediate support Within the GoFoundMe link are details of expenses there will be meal expenses, wardrobe expenses, emergency expenses, etc., but no generous contribution will go to waste.
Those who have the authority to add my family names to the list for travel abroad are asking for astronomical amounts per person! They will not add names until we can prove that we have the funds ready
I ask for your help because this is not only my battle alone, but a battle in which we ask for your help in order to survive and preserve my families. Any donation, big or small, will make a huge impact on my life and the lives of my family. I am grateful to everyone who donated, and I will forever be grateful for giving me and my family hope and the opportunity to survive and build a better future.
Thanks for reading my story. To share my story with your friends and family. I hope there will be a ceasefire, and we can get the comfort and security we deserve to build our lives again. My hope is in all of you, without exception, who can help me with all of this
Thank you for reading what I wrote with my mind, and thank you again for your support and participation
My name is Islam Al-Najjar, a 27-year-old Palestinian from… Islam Najjar needs your support for From the Ashes: A Call for Humanity to Re
This campaign is verified by people, and the link is here
here
here
here
here
Go to paypal.me/mido87ss and type in the amount. Since it’s PayPal, it's easy and secure. Don’t have a PayPal account? No worries.
palestinian culture isn't something for you to "consume". buying as many "palestinian themed" things as possible isn't being an ally. please focus on real life decolonization rather than being a performative ally. pay attention whether you are actually appreciating the culture or just consuming it for your own self interest and gain.
and at this point in time instead of buying another $20.00 kuffiyeh online or paying $50 plus s&h for a hoodie of Luffy holding a Palestinian Flag, please consider finding a family on the vetted fundraising list and donate. you will be doing so much more than contributing to cash grabs marketing off a genocide
So I managed to rip the script files from Survive, and I seem to find something interesting in them--there are some Japanese dialogues that I don't remember encountering and have no English counterpart (i.e. the keys that refer to them aren't present in the English files, meaning that they aren't translated), which means these are probably dialogues that were cut in the final game?
For instance, we have this dialogue:
I put the whole scene into a table and translated it:
As you can see from the first pic, the script doesn't have the character name attached to them, and I haven't found a way to reliably figure it out either, so for now I'm just color-coding the dialogues based on who I think say it; green is most definitely Shuuji and purple is most definitely Ryou, but red is hard to decide... my guess is that it might be Saki, since you can infer from the dialogue that 1) it's spoken by a girl, judging from the feminine tone; 2) the speaker is close to Ryou; 3) Shuuji has a reservation about being called "-kun" by her (which suggests that she might be younger than Shuuji). Although her pronoun is stylized as 私 instead of わたし and she calls Shuuji with a "-san" instead of "-kun", this might be what was initially planned for her character.
I'll try to find more dialogues like this, I suspect there are more. And perhaps I'll try to compile it somewhere easily accessible? I'll decide later.
EDIT: I was a bit torn the first line and third line specifically being Saki's since it could also have been Ryou's, so I tried to ask a Japanese mutual who played Survive, and she believed it was Saki's as well judging from the tone
If anyone has opinions on this, please feel free to tell me!
I never understand people who are like "I love this character but I hate this other one" and the two characters are best friends. Your favorite character loves them, that's THEIR blorbo, their little shit, their sun and stars, and you want to hate them?
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Happy belated 2nd anniversary to one of my favorite games, Digimon Survive! To celebrate it, I was inspired to combine my professional expertise as a data scientist with my personal enthusiasm about the game to make a data science passion project revolving around it. This small project aims to delve into Steam reviews of the game and unveil what makes (and breaks) the game for the players who’ve tried it out. You can check all of it out under the cut, since this is going to be a really long post.
Before diving in, a bit about myself and this project to preface: I’m a data scientist with three years of industry experience and a big fan of Digimon Survive since its release, in which I’ve played both the JP and EN versions (you probably also know me as Shuuji’s passionate defense attorney lol). Emphasis on industry–my academic background is actually in a non-IT engineering field, and I have limited experience in data science applications in a formal academic setting. This means I tend to focus more on practical implications than on academic rigor (you can probably see what I mean by this as you read on). That said, this project is a labor of love aimed at understanding and celebrating a game that’s very close to my heart, so I did the best that I could with the data I have.
1. Data Collection and Preprocessing
Seeing the wealth of quality reviews available on Steam, I decided to use it as my data source for this project. I used a modified version of the Steam Review Scraper to gather the review data. Out of the 3,019 reviews available on the site (as of today), I scraped 1,533 reviews–all of which are in English–which accounts for 50.8% of the total. I focus on English reviews for the time being because it’s easier to clean and analyze English reviews with the NLP libraries currently available on Python (for those who aren’t familiar with it, Python is a programming language popular among data scientists, and it’s what I used for this project). Here’s a snapshot of the raw data to give you an idea of what it’s like:
This dataset isn’t quite ready for analysis though–we need to preprocess and clean it first to ensure more effective and accurate analysis. Here’s an example of what the data looks like after going through the general data cleaning (it’ll need more data cleaning later, but for now this should suffice as a first step):
Something to note here is that I keep the “helpfulness” dimension (column) as a way to weight the reviews (i.e., reviews that more people find helpful hold more weight than those that aren’t). I think this is a fair thing to do since I view the “helpfulness” score as people agreeing with the opinion voiced in the review.
2. Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
2.1. Sentiment Breakdown
What is the general sentiment surrounding the game? To understand that, I simply mapped the reviews based on whether or not the reviewers recommended the game (i.e., “Recommended” = positive, “Not Recommended” = negative), because I think it’s a pretty apt thing to do rather than running a whole new sentiment analysis. And here’s what we got:
Positive reviews: 1,257 (82.0%)
Negative reviews: 276 (18.0%)
Based on the data, we can see that the majority of people have a positive sentiment about the game, with only a relatively small minority viewing it unfavorably.
2.2. Word Counts
Now, let’s look at the frequency of words in both positive and negative reviews.
Interestingly, the top words based solely on their frequency are similar between the two categories. While it provides a preliminary picture, it’s hard to tell what truly makes the game good for the people who like it and bad for the people who don’t, so we need more nuanced analyses for better understanding.
3. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)
Next, I employed Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), which is a popular technique used for topic modelling that can discover hidden themes in texts and summarize them into topics. In the case of this project, using LDA can help us find out what are some of the most frequent talking points that players discuss in their reviews. For those curious of how it works, this diagram I snatched from this article explains how LDA works in a simple way:
Because this post was initially done in the form of a Twitter thread, I decided to go with 4 n-components (number of topics) to be identified each in positive and negative review topics (*do note that this might not be the best number to choose for the n-components). Also, the results are going to be presented in the form of word clouds.
3.1. Positive Review Topics
Topic 1 seems to focus mostly on game mechanics like “battle” and “choice”. Despite the generally favorable reviews of Survive, even the people who like it still acknowledge the gameplay as an issue for the game. There's a recurring comparison to another Digimon game, Cyber Sleuth, where Survive's mechanics are probably seen as a notable point of comparison.
Topic 2 is centered around how the game design ties to the narrative design. Specifically, players seem to love the different endings and evolutions, where the branching storylines and multiple outcomes keep players engaged and invested in their choices.
Topic 3 is the most frequently mentioned among all the topics and it centers around the characters and story. The characters and storyline seem to resonate deeply with fans, presumably especially true for long-time fans of the anime series. This topic shows that the emotional connection to the story and its characters is a significant factor in the positive reception of the game.
Topic 4, much like Topic 1, is largely about the gameplay, specifically about the combat. It seems that opinions are divided–despite the criticisms surrounding the actual (SRPG) gameplay part of Survive, there are some who do enjoy it for what it is. This makes the gameplay a polarizing aspect to Survive that’s both a positive experience and an area needing improvement.
3.2. Negative Review Topics
Topic 1 of the negative reviews–in contrast to the first topic uncovered from the positive reviews–seem to center around character enjoyment instead. Despite gameplay issues (mainly the combat system) hindering the overall enjoyment of the game, even the critics of the game still appreciate its characters and acknowledge it as one of the game’s strongest suits. However, translation problems in the game are also noted, which affect the immersion and enjoyment of the game.
Topic 2 seems to mostly come from people who are disappointed about Survive being largely a visual novel. Some players don’t like the heavy focus on story and dialogues, wishing for more battle elements. This expectation mismatch leads to dissatisfaction.
Echoing the first topic, Topic 3 is also about gameplay critique. There seems to be significant frustration over the game’s mechanics. Terms like “anime” and “cutscene” likely refer to the complaints about the game freezing after the animated cutscene that plays at the beginning of the game, which has now actually been fixed. There are also mentions of “price”, probably from people who think that the price point of the game isn’t worth it considering the lack of proper gameplay and the aforementioned bug.
Similar to the positive reviews, comparison to Cyber Sleuth is also a recurring theme in the negative reviews, as shown in Topic 4 (which is also the most frequent topic in the negative reviews). It seems that some recommend Cyber Sleuth over Survive for a better gameplay experience when it comes to Digimon games.
3.3. Key Takeaway from LDA Results
We found out that most people agree that Survive’s strength lies on its story and characters. Meanwhile, its gameplay mechanics receive mixed reviews with most finding it not executed as well as its narrative design.
4. Text Network Analysis (TNA)
Ever thought about how words in reviews connect with each other? Text Network Analysis (TNA) can help us analyze and visualize these connections. Simply put, TNA views text as a network of interconnected words, revealing how these words are related based on their co-occurrence in the reviews. Aside from that, we can also measure stuff like centrality and detect communities. What are these, anyway? To avoid confusion, let me briefly explain these terms first before proceeding into the analysis:
Betweenness centrality measures how often a node (a word) appears on the shortest paths between other nodes (i.e. other words). In the context of TNA, it indicates the influence of a word in connecting different parts of the network–a high betweenness centrality means that the word is crucial in linking various concepts within the reviews.
Eigenvector centrality measures the influence of a node (a word) based on the centrality of its neighbors, i.e., a word is considered important if it is connected to other important words. High eigenvector centrality means the word is connected to many other influential words, so words with high eigenvector centrality are central to the review network and play a significant role in shaping the overall sentiment and themes.
Closeness centrality measures how close a node is to all other nodes in the network, which is calculated as the reciprocal of the average shortest path length to all other nodes. High closeness centrality means the word is well-positioned to quickly interact with many other words. The implication that comes with this is that words with high closeness centrality are pivotal in spreading information throughout the network, meaning they are central to the overall discussion.
Before I explain what the Louvain community is, let me explain first about the concept of community and community detection. In the context of TNA, communities are groups of words that are more closely related to each other that we can think of as a group/cluster (i.e., community). Community detection is the process of identifying these groups within a network of words. One of the techniques we can use is Louvain community detection. Using this helps us understand different themes in the reviews.
Now with that out of the way, let’s move onto the actual analysis. We’ll start first with the words co-occurrence where we take the top 100 pairs of words each from positive and negative reviews, and then move onto the centrality and community analysis. As a note, for the words co-occurrence graphs, the size of the nodes indicates how often the respective word is mentioned in the reviews, while the thickness of the edges represents how strongly connected a certain pair of words is.
4.1. Positive Reviews
4.1.1. Words Co-occurrence in Positive Reviews
In the positive reviews, the terms “story”, “visual”, “novel”, and “character” are among the most frequent words. They also make up prominent pairs like “visual-novel” and combinations involving “story” with positive adjectives (e.g., “like”, “good”, “great”, “love”, “enjoy”). This shows that the story is a central aspect of enjoyment for players. “Story” also connects strongly with “character”, indicating how the characters are a pivotal part of what makes the story good.
4.1.2. Centrality and Community Detection in Positive Reviews
Centrality Measures: We see that the word “story” holds the highest values across betweenness, eigenvector, and closeness centrality, which makes it the central theme in the positive reception of Survive. Other high centrality words like "visual-novel" and "character" also support this finding. The key takeaway from this is that the narrative elements are what people like the most from the game, aligning with what we previously saw from the LDA analysis.
Louvain Communities:
Community 0 (“visual”, “novel”, “combat”, “great”, “gameplay”, “far”, “love”, “recommend”, “rpg”, “enjoy”, and “tactical”) seems to revolve around story and gameplay integration, recommending Survive to fans of visual novels and tactical RPGs.
Community 1 (“like”, “good”, “play”, “character”, “time”, “fan”, “battle”, and “first”) likely represents the opinions of first-time players who appreciate good characters (as fans of the Digimon anime, perhaps?)
Community 2 (“story”, “take”, “fun”, “give”, “look”, “choice”, “different”, “dark”, “experience”, and “world”) highlights the dark story and world, also how the different choices can lead to varied experiences. This suggests that the players who like it welcome the dark twist in the story, and enjoy how their choices can shape their experience in the game.
4.2. Negative Reviews
4.2.1. Words Co-occurrence in Negative Reviews
As we can see, the frequencies of words are more balanced in the negative reviews than in the positive reviews, although terms like “story”, “visual”, and “novel” still pop up more than others. For the popular pairs, “visual”-“novel” tops, followed by “like”-“story”, “like”-“play”, and “like”-“novel”. We can infer from this finding that most negative reviews seem to talk about how this game is only recommended for those who enjoy visual novels and story-heavy games, and not for people who actually look for an actual, proper gameplay.
4.2.2. Centrality and Community Detection in Positive Reviews
Centrality Measures: The words with the highest values across different centrality measures are “like”, “story”, “visual”, “play”, and “novel”. We can quickly see how this most likely means that the game’s critics acknowledge that this game is only meant for people who like visual novels and story-heavy games, aligning with our previous findings.
Louvain Communities:
Community 0 (“cyber” and “sleuth”) very likely comes from people who enjoy Cyber Sleuth a lot more and keep making comparisons between the two games.
Community 1 (“like”, “actually”, “recommend”, “still”, “keep”, “dialogue”, “look”, “take”, “free”, “try”, “read”, “boring”, and “first”) represents the general opinion that Survive is for people who like story-heavy games, as it has a lot of dialogues and requires you to read a lot, otherwise you’ll find it boring.
Community 2 (“story”, “price”, “start”, “choice”, “give”, “end”, and “love”) is similar to Community 1 in that it also mainly talks about how Survive is a game for people who love story-heavy games. It also perhaps talks about how the price isn’t justifiable considering how a large part of it only revolves around reading the story with minimal proper gameplay.
Community 3 (“visual”, “play”, “novel”, “character”, “time”, “battle”, “good”, “hour”, “bad”, “gameplay”, “combat”, “point”, and “rpg”), again, essentially repeats the points of Communities 1 and 2–it’s a game for visual novel enjoyers and not for those looking for an engaging RPG. It probably highlights how the visual novel portion is the good part of the game, while the RPG portion is–simply put–bad.
4.3. Key Takeaway from TNA Results
Both positive and negative reviews frequently bring up the game’s narrative elements, which shows that this is a polarizing aspect of Survive. Positive reviews praise the game for its rich, story-heavy content. On the other hand, the negative reviews criticize the heavy focus on narrative, perceiving it as boring. It shows that Survive is mostly meant for people who appreciate a game more for its story than gameplay. This finding aligns with our previous finding in LDA.
5. Conclusion and Final Thoughts
So, what's the final takeaway? Overall, Digimon Survive is loved for its compelling story and characters, perhaps particularly by fans of the Digimon anime. However, even most positive reviews of the game acknowledge that the gameplay could use some areas of improvement. I personally agree with this general sentiment, even as someone who likes Survive for what it is–improved combat elements could’ve provided a more balanced experience that could elevate Survive to be an even better game.
Comparisons with Cyber Sleuth pop up a lot in both positive and negative reviews alike, though I observe they recur more often in negative ones. Cyber Sleuth is most likely brought up as an alternative for people who don’t like Survive–if you don’t enjoy visual novels, then you’re better off just skip Survive and try Cyber Sleuth instead.
And that’s all I have for now! I hope you enjoy this post and find it insightful. If you want to see the full codes for this project, you can find them here (I thought about linking my Github account, but since it’s connected with my professional endeavors, I’d rather not to as to keep my privacy lol) (also, as of the writing of this post, the codes are still somewhat messy, and I’m looking to tidy them up later). If you have any suggestions or corrections, feel free to tell me on here or via twitter (@deutzian). Thank you for reading this far!
Ao3 version that lets you open the 'director's cut' where I, the author, explain every detail in excruciating detail to you and what it is in reference to.