I'd argue Mastodon's more that speed (and I'm on there too) - I'm very wary that this could ultimately end up being the next dumpster fire a few years down the line, though I'm slightly more hopeful since Dorsey left and Bluesky has actually been taking moderation requirements a bit more seriously.

I wanted to switch once I saw news of them sneaking copilot onto taskbars without consent and popping windows 11 nag screens (not that my PC can run 11 in its current state anyway). There's also the fun fact that my parents' older PC locks up for hours every time windows 10 tries to update...

Dude, same. Started using Linux full-time again in May of this year, after not having done so for close to 2 decades.

(To be clear, this is kind of awesome and I hope this encourages other companies to get back into the practice! But they gotta set players' expectations accordingly! lol)

One final note though, I guess: good lord, the Ys X demo is too long to be called a demo. It's practically a 90's shareware episode, i.e. a significant consecutive chunk of the entire game. It is NOT just bits and pieces stitched together to expose important mechanics within a couple of hours.

There are other gameplay aspects I'm also not sold on, but I'll give those more of a chance for me to get used to them. But the return of a tired-out feature surrounded by more padding feels disappointing. Again, the rest of the game is strong enough that I'm still looking forward to playing it.

Initially I thought "it'd be cool if they come out of the ship's cabins/decks" NOPE they just materialize out of thin air. Feels like absolutely the lowest-effort part of the game in terms of potential attention to detail. Not only did an unwanted feature return for a 3rd game, it feels phoned in.

Turns out seafaring is a wrapper of even more padding AROUND those. During sea battles you sometimes need to board an enemy ship... and you suddenly find yourself in the same wave-based slog once again. Except they seem even more superficial as enemies spawn on-the-spot right in front of your face.

I was initially willing to give this a pass as it seemed to replace the tower defense segments that a lot of people were utterly sick and tired of after 2 other games had it (heck, I reckon plenty were tired of it after 1 game). The problem is... it's not replacing that.

Getting from point A to point B initially takes forever and feels like unnecessary padding. Fortunately there's fast-travel to specific points from the get-go, and also sea currents that speed you up between specific places. Unfortunately it doesn't end with that...