In terms of being a cup, a lightbulb seems like it would be one of the worst objects to choose. So why do I also think it'd be satisfying to take a little swig from these?

Unequivocally no, but neither were we. I've seen signs that both make me proud and concerned, but they'll pull through.

Tell her I said SCARAB FOREARM BIRD BIRD BIRD

Vague and foreboding just enough for me to relate to. Emoshitpostingmaxxing

I can second this. I once got 2nd and 4th gear back in my 1993 Saturn LS1 after getting some air time off a decent bump on a country road.

Coincidentally, that same bump is how I lost 2nd and 4th. Life can be tricksy mistress.

This meme would just be a fact if the blur wasn't present on the corn, and I'm here for it

We're on a similar clip! I have played P5R and Metaphor maybe a year or two ago, but in the past few months, I picked up Persona 3 Reload on sale. There's something about getting to the end of these 100+ hour, character-focused JRPGs (for me, at least) that leaves such a specific feeling (bawling my eyes out for the last hour of the game).

SPOILER FOR P5R NARRATIVE

Since this was your first time through P5R - How did you feel about the Justice Confidant's arc? I usually don't feel too much remorse for villain characters in these types of games, but I can honestly say that Akechi gets me right in the feels, despite the awful things he's done. Some of it is probably due to his voice actor. The guy has some breadth to convince me that this "pleasant boy" really went insane during his arc.

END SPOILER

I'd genuinely like to know your thoughts on the game as a whole, or anything about the characters.

The reason I brought up P3R is because I beat that (hard recommend if you enjoyed P5R, by the way), but then didn't know what game I wanted to start into next. So, I just hopped back into P5R because I evidently wanted to keep crying after another 100 hours. Got through that, and went into Metaphor next, which is what I'm replaying now. I had started my P5R replay as NG+ at first, but the way that works, I had so much access to endgame stuff that the beginning just didn't feel quite right, so I just started brand new games for both my P5R and Metaphor playthroughs (although I think Metaphor might handle NG+ in a way I would like better)

Metaphor will be a little different than Persona, but it remains reminiscent of it. A lot of mechanics you'll just probably vibe out though. Combat won't use the "1 more" system you're used to, but the replacement system is still interesting to me, in terms of getting me to think through how I will take each character's action. Social links/Confidants are fairly similar with some Quality of Life improvements (no more going to the Velvet room to pick up a pile of personas you aren't gonna use for combat, just for Confidants!). Metaphor builds a good sense of adventure with its mechanics, too which I like. I could see some people being a little off-put by the game's presentation of its narrative and fantasy elements. All in all, I'm enjoying, laughing, and crying along with this replay of it. Once again, the voice work for these characters is doing wonders. For its tone, Metaphor has some moments that are GRIM. Sometimes way more grim than I thought they'd take it, with their somewhat cute-sy presentation. But its narrative is very specifically about making the world a better place going forward.

If you are aiming for "more P5R", I'd point you to pick up P3R as your next title. But, if you want a little break from that particular scene (modern-ish city/school life), then Metaphor is a great pick, too.

It's as if there's people you don't know who haven't been getting the raises you're talking about while they continue to accept bullshit from their jobs while they slowly become unable to leave their apartment due to both financial and mental issues accruing over years.

I hear your experience as well. I know there's people who aren't in that boat. I don't think that invalidates my position though.

Thanks for link!

I know that finding this answer is insanely difficult (or, at least, I imagine it is) but I really am left wondering what exactly the DRM is doing while the game is active to have such a process/resource overhead.

Like, async tasks that are holding a thread hostage until it's sync point? Trying to run huge hash tasks to ensure local storage of game files are "intact"? And seriously, 1.5 - 2GB of RAM utilization? I have to imagine that's not actually memory in use, but is just holding a giant block of gobbledegook so its harder to reverse?

I'm not a software engineer, so I must be way off the mark, but from my small experience in the dev world as a QA person, the performance uplifts from removing DRM should not be this palpable.... Right? I feel sorry for the actual devs who essentially just "find out" that their work is getting quite literally crippled by something that is universally hated by the consumer AND got cracked in 40 days of release.

I played a fair amount of SupCom Forged Alliance with a community patch/mod called FaF. It's amazing the work that team put forth to make the game run well, but this must've been the problem they couldn't really fix entirely. Played amazingly when I played solo against AI, but once I played with friends online, the in-game speed would start to slow to a crawl by the mid to late game, seemingly driven by unit counts/activity. Game was tons of fun to play, but it was hard to play with my group when the endgame was basically playing in slow motion.

I"m a few steps in. I have the hardware. I know what hypervisor I want to use, and I know some of the things I want it to run with plenty of fun sounding projects to get it to host things. Its nearly put together (just an extra cache disk to hook up with cables already ran for it so it'll take 10 minutes to do). But it's sat on my desk since March of this year. Unconfigured. Just there.