In my view, the value of events is inversely proportional to how much value you need to get out of them. Like basically, the more you need to get some sort of return on the cost, the worse it'll be. Turn up not worrying about it, spend the whole time on the terrace, and you'll randomly meet people.

I also think it was a mistake to include characters from the first game. The less I was reminded of the first game, the more I enjoyed the second.

Don't really understand the decision to have a city to explore - there was nothing to do other than remark upon how nice it looked. Traversing it just negatively affected the pacing of the game, particularly towards the end.

I was a little surprised also by how straight-forward the narrative ultimately was. I was expecting twists and turns and there really weren't any. Certain characters were blatantly telegraphed from the start and the only surprise was that this wasn't misdirection.

There's basically the way the game wants you to play the combat, and once you find out what that is (and after switching to a gamepad) it became more enjoyable but then does not really lend itself to repeated play-throughs.

Have now completed the game. Was fairly satisfied overall. I often felt contrained by dialog options available to me. I very much greased the wheels, held cards close to my chest. But the game treated that as if I trusted people I absolutely did not, sometimes.

Not really into the voice in your head trope thing. Would be down for a noir detective vampire game in its own right, though.

"Wherever you get your podcasts" doesn't help you even if you don't.

I find the one rogue teaspoon upsetting.

Yes, this is especially annoying when you get multiple links to multiple streaming sites none of which provide you with what you want to watch and you just want to see a place you actually can. This is all part of the enshitification of the internet.

Furthermore I've never actually truly understood patriotism in the "proud of your nation" format. Proud? Of happenstance? I mean, I'm reasonably happy to be British but it was not of my doing.

I'd hold out for the Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em Frank Spencer on rollerskates DLC.

Considering that outside of Jubilees, flag-waving is like the least traditionally British cultural expression ever there is something of the ironic about displaying them under the guise of patriotism. Leave the flag waving to the Americans ;)

I like the fruitless attempt at adding some semblance of class with the incongruous crown that looks like an afterthought when a higher up said we can't possibly stock this crap.

Thankyou. I glad this makes you feel better about your own phone situation.

I annoyingly recently changed phones (cos the perfectly functioning phone I was using stopped receiving security updates) and I found the whole process surprisingly painless. It asked me if I wanted to pull over stuff from old phone. I said yes. It did. No issues with banking or authenticator apps.

I mean, that's basically what he did with Gremlins 2 apart from it turning out accidentally amazing ;)

The only way this can work is if Gremlins sabotage the production process for Gremlins 3 so that the film can be intentionally shit.

Okay.