I have 3 games in the top 5.

Posted because I have been working on this again

And we got an article from someone who has played the demo:

They suspect that we might get a Sword and Shield event and characters to celebrate the release of the games, like a current event FEH is having for FE3H. (I'm hoping for Allister. Shy Guy's my favorite so far.)

They can't tell us how many or which Trainers have Synga Suits atm, which isn't really surprising. I'm just hoping that the protagonists and rivals get them.

Players will be able to role for new Sync Pairs in Sync Scouts. They have star rankings from 3 to 5, but can be levelled-up with enough rolls.

It costs 300 Gems (which can be bought or earned in-game.) to roll for a new Sync Pair. Sync Scouts are the only monetization in the game, with items like Potions can only be acquired in-game.

With each roll, you get 3 Scout Points. Getting 400 of these points allows you to choose any Sync Pair you want.

Nadia Oxford, writing for US Gamer:

“MEA is a deeply flawed game. Especially at launch,” tweeted BioWare’s Executive Producer of Anthem and Dragon Age, Mark Darrah. “But the review environment was crowded. Nier, Nioh, Horizon, and Zelda all launched in MEAs window. Each does something better than MEA (again, a flawed game).”

While Darrah doesn’t believe launching in a different window would’ve driven up Andromeda’s Metacritic score (currently at 72 / 100 for the PC) dramatically, he does suggest it might’ve bumped the score up to 77/78.

I agree. Spring 2017 was phenomenal for games. Mass Effect: Andromeda was easily the worst of big-budget game of that bunch.

I also thought Jim Sterling’s reaction was funny:

The only window this game needs is an open one it can be flung out of.

Aggretsuko vs. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 -- "Woman's Work"

I care about issues. I care because people are people; And people have feelings. Even if those people are neurotypicals who want to see my autistic brain zapped out of existence for the heinous sin of being different to theirs? I still wouldn't want to see them suffer. I might want to hammer some empathy, care, and wisdom into them, but I'd never want to see them suffer.

I've pointed this out before -- If a feminist is shitty to a trans person, I'll still support feminism because feminists don't deserve to suffer. If a trans person is shitty to otherkin, I'll still support them for the same reason. I wish more of the supposedly sapient life on this planet actually understood this and practised it. I'm just dumbfounded by the lack of care. You want care but you're not really willing to give it? That's kind of selfish and narcissistic, don't you think?

It's interesting how many cultures of men have an issue with this as well. Oh, they'd like their largely imagined grievances heard but they'd turn a blind ear to all the suffering women have to endure. Aggretsuko is a grand illustration of this and it's why Japan's birth rates are dropping like a stone. Oh, no, they are! if this keeps up then the Japanese ethnicity will be gone within a few generations and no amount of paid off Swingles nights from the Japanese gov't could fix it.

Why don't Japanese women want to take interest in the men?

"Women's work."

And Aggretsuko explains this sublimely. If you've not watched it (it's on Netflix), then I'd heartily recommend it. This is why some white Alt-Right dudes -- who've got their heads so far up their arses that they see only very narrowly through their own nostrils -- didn't understand the problem with Xenoblade Chronicles. You see, it wasn't just that Pyra -- one of the main characters -- had an outfit meant for men to ogle, but that her job was woman's work.

That's why straight Alt-Right guys are invariably single? Are there any gay Alt-Right people despite the Alt-Right being homophobic? Probably, people are just that stupid that they'd forgive those who hate them or hate others. I'm not quite that forgiving, myself, as I think that causing another person to suffer just 'cause you're trying to appeal to a Nazi status quo is the very, very worst kind of awful cowardice. If you do that, you're betraying everyone, including yourself.

I don't want to digress too much -- But this is why I give gay people who shit on trans people, or trans people who shit on otherkin a lot of flack. They're spineless cowards who make things worse for everyone and I wish they'd stop identifying as gay/trans or whatever else they think they are because by identifying in that way and appealing to the Nazi status quo, they're just making things worse for everyone. We'd all be better off if they just packed up and left, I'm sure they would much more prefer an officially recognised position as brainwashed Nazi lapdogs anyway. I think that'd make them happier. They'd get to wear gimp suits and say "Yes Sir" a lot. That'd do it for them, I think.

Anyway, there are gay people who don't attack trans, just as there are trans people who don't attack otherkin, et cetera. Why? They recognise that the Nazi status quo is harmful to everyone. We're all human beings, after all, we're all sepient creatures that have feelings and we can all suffer. As such, it's humane and caring to realise that if you don't want to suffer, other people don't either. Only narcissists fail at this equation, I think. And like I said, they can go and prostrate themselves before Nazis. Enjoy the gimp suits.

Deeply unpleasant people, really. Nasty lot. And we shouldn't give anyone who can't recognise that other people are equal and deserve to not suffer a free pass. It's like what I spoke of with Karl Popper's Paradox of Intolerance. If we aren't incredibly intolerant of intolerance, then tolerance dies. That's the way of things, so we have to be willing to not pull our punches. If someone's being a Nazi, you call them a Nazi; If someone's being a Nazi lapdog, you call them that, too.

And yes, feminists, trans people, gay folk, otherkin, or anyone of any group that experiences prejudice can be a Nazi lapdog. It's mostly spineless cowardice, in that they'd prefer to kowtow to Nazi thinking for a quiet life rather than to stand with the rest of us in a show of solidarity. We're all in this together, right? No mwatter what walk of life you're from, you should stand up to supremacist Nazi sentiments of inequality. You need to be willing to put yourself on the line for other people.

I actually do that, in real life and on the internet. It doesn't give me the easiest life, I'll tell you that, but would you like to know what I can do that Nazi lapdogs will never be able to? I can sleep well at night.

Inequality that leads to suffering is Nazi thinking and needs to be stamped out.

And the notion of 'woman's work' is as much a supremacist Nazi notion as any other. Japan's not immune to Nazi sentiment, there's as much of it there as there is anywhere else. Birthrates are dropping because the men are all wound up in Nazi sentiment and they think that being a stay-at-home wife who rears and raises children, who organises the house, who cooks for the man? Well, that's 'woman's work' and that's what all women should aspire to. Women are just sick of it, no matter where in the world they are. It's why -- as studies show -- both Japanese men and Alt-Right men alike can't land a date, they're all single.

Let's get back to Xenoblade Chronicles and the issue I had with it that Nazi lapdogs would prefer to delude both themselves and others about, they'd rather think they don't see it and therefore neither do we. You see, being a submissive woman who's a healer -- a nurse, effectively? That's 'woman's work.' Whereas being a frontline fighter? That's 'man's work.' Sadly, you even get women being apologists for this, the US Gamer website had one journalist who believed it acceptable to behave this way. Just another cowardly Nazi lapdog.

Aggretsuko starts off like that -- She's an apologist for Nazi thinking and puts up with mistreatment by men. It's only thanks to two powerful women (the secretary secretarybird Washimi, and the gorilla Gori) that she even begins to take the kind of stand she'd need to enjoy happiness in life. She has a lot of incredibly toxic ideas at first that she has to work through to become a more complete and hpapy person. In the end, she outright refuses to be a lapdog any longer and is rewarded with fulfilment and happiness.

Her life might be less easy now that she's standing up for herself but at least now she won't be walked all over by men who dictate to her what women can and cannot do. The problem with a game like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 -- and why I'm so mad at Japan despite loving so much of it -- is with characters like Pyra who quietly accept what is 'women's work' and, supposedly, 'men's work.' Pyra naturally has to be a submissive healer, not a frontline brawler.

Similarly, men can't ever serve the role of healer because it's 'demeaning' for a man. This is why I have an equal amount of umbrage for Overwatch and what its community healthily refers to as 'healsluts.' Women meant for men to ogle who do 'women's work' for the men. Huzzah, Nazi sentiment defining people, woo. Not like that ever went horribly wrong, right?

Bloody hell. Kids these days. Dew dew. Sometimes I want to smack them all collectively with a very large newspaper. A newspaper large enough to do that. I don't think there is one, nor do I know where they all are, so they're off the hook for now and this is a chance for them to get their act together.

I'd recommend Aggretsuko for any short-sighted blowhard who's unable to understand what women have to deal with. And it's disingenuous to assume this is just in the eastern workplace as well; In the USA and Europe there are still plenty of old men in corporate structures who have incredibly outdated views of what men and women can and cannot respectively do. I wish I could've bought Xenoblade Chronicles 2 -- It has a talking tiger that's actually an AI stored in a living weapon. I live for that nonsense. Yet I'm not allowed to enjoy it as confoundingly Nintendo thought it all right and completely acceptable to leave Nazi sentiment lingering in that game instead of actually doing the work to improve it for everyone.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some women in Japan who import certain localised games from the West simply because of this improved state of affairs. For example, Xenoblade Chronicles X was localised to fix many of these issues, with only a few left lingering, and as such it's an objectively superior experience when compared against the Japanese original. I feel bad for Japanese women though; Even though they're putting their foot down with their men, their blissfully oblivious men are too vacuous to notice.

That's unfortunate, but it's still not acceptable. It does make me happy to see creations like Aggretsuko though and I certainly hope we see more of them. What we need is more of Aggretsuko and less of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Nintendo, you wonder why the popularity of Japanese games is dropping in the West? This is why. It hurts your sales, because the contingent of Alt-Right people who'd think this acceptable is tiny compared to those who'd want to make a statement by leaving it on the shelves -- As I did.

It's this kind of thinking that'll sink the good ship Nintendo. They need the western market, so they need to improve their equality game to appeal to a wider range of customers. The world needs to keep moving towards more and more equality, to say no to Nazi sentiments and shame cowardly Nazi lapdogs.

Sigh.

Thankfully, there are good people out there who'll understand this. I feel that the number of them are increasing every day. I want to believe that empathy is becoming more commonplace, that the sentiment of appeasing a Nazi status quo is being replaced with punching Nazis in the face for being horrible monsters. That's where the world needs to go.

We're all human beings. We can all suffer. If you can suffer, so can I. If I can suffer, so can you. And there's much we have to suffer together, so there's no reason we shouldn't all stand together as a united front against the real enemy. The kinds of Nazi sentiments that cause us to suffer in the first place.

There are three concepts that I've declared as my mortal enemies, whom I'm ready to stamp out whenever and wherever I get the chance. I've declared them in numerous past posts but I want to do so again, until I'm blue in the face. Your problem isn't with trans people, or gay people, or otherkin... Stop being a Nazi lapdog! Your suffering is sourced from Nazis thanks to three incredibly toxic ideologies that they hold dear.

Supremacy – Where any person believes themselves to be better than another;

Enforced Suffering – Where any person is forced to experience torture and anguish against their will;

Institutionalised Uselessness – Where the world is designed in such a way that some people are never allowed to offer their worth.

It's those concepts and the ones who hold them that you have to fight, tooth and nail, in whatever way you deem necessary. A Nazi is anyone who holds those three toxic ideologies, and sadly there is a contingent of these people in every culture, today; And worse, there's a larger contingent of cowardly, spineless lapdogs who kowtow to them and obey them.

In this case, the three toxic ideologies manifest as 'women's work.'

Why?

Supremacy -- Men who believe themselves superior to women so there are tasks they believe they can achieve with more efficiency or that there are tasks that women aren't capable of at all;

Enforced Suffering -- The self-esteem and confidence of women is whittled down intentionally to 'keep them in their place,' this is so that men can continue to hold their power over women and keep the status quo;

Institutionalised Uselessness -- Women are conditioned, brainwashed, to accept tehir role in life and never question it, this has been referred to as 'internalised misogyny' but the problem runs much deeper than that, it's a programmed feeling of the uselessness of their gender that they can't shake.

And that's fucking awful. That's why characters like Pyra in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 bother me so much -- Because she seems so brainwashed into Nazi thinking that she's unable to be anything other than the objectified, man-serving nurse that she was literally made to be. And that's telling, isn't it? She was created by a man to serve these roles, she was programmed to obey them and find them fulfilling. Which, apparently, Nadia Oxford at US Gamer doesn't see as problematic.

That's because I think Nadia has been programmed in exactly this way. She isn't aware of it, so she simply repeats the Nazi signal to uphold the status quo.

This attitude is commonplace in Japan, that women should be seen in the way Pyra is seen. A xexy, submissive nurse ready to serve the needs of men at the drop of a hat, putting the desires of men above everything else, including their own happiness as if they were nothing more than robots. And in Xenoblade Chronicles they bloody ARE robots, which is just a fetish.

Here's what I'm trying to get at: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a fetish game. It's a fetish game about the desired end-point for women, where the female gender is forced to abandon what little agency, sapience, independence, individuality, and drive it has in Japanese culture and become nothing more than a pretty drone, waiting on men hand and foot.

Sure, sure, sure... Xenoblade Chronicles 2, at one point, makes a half-hearted attempt to point out that this is toxic. It's mumbled under the breath as a sort of disclaimer so that they can get back to enjoying fetishised views of women. It's not exactly a core tennet of the game, it never was. The primary tennet of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is that women are made to serve men.

Which is why there are so many female blades.

It's a fetish game.

Thankfully, all of Japan isn't like that. Thankfully. And things are beginning to slowly turn around, there. What needs to happen though is for the Japanese gov't to actually realise that the misogyny that's become so acceptable in Japanese culture is why birthrates are dropping. This is why it's imperative for them to do more to fix this via laws and education -- Young men should have it explained to them in school from a very young age why this isn't okay. Why it's just as acceptable for a man to be the stay-at-home wife as it is for the woman to be successful at business. This is for the Japanese gov't to do, and until they do, birthrates will just continue to drop like a stone.

When actual fetish games like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are being developed and released over there? That's when you know you have a problem. The only way they could possibly have made this worse is if they'd actually dressed up the women in gimp suits to exemplify their brainwashed lapdog status.