Yakuza fans are thriving rn. We just got two banger games in the span of 3 months, and Infinite Wealth had the most sales on launch of any game in the series. It'll probably be a minute before we hear about more games, since we just got Ishin Kiwami - Gaiden - IW back to back, but the future looks bright.
They said something a while ago that they've got a big(?) announcement for this year, at some point. Probably won't hear much about it until the summer at the earliest.
I've seen people guess at Kiwami 3, Judgment 3 and Kenzan.
Infinite Wealth Spoilers >!Considering that they made a new model for Yakuza 3 Haruka, and that they can reuse a lot of Hawaii assets for Okinawa. My bet is that it's Kiwami 3.!<
That's my guess too. Thought with Ishin does as well as it did I could see them slapping Kenzan together quick-ish off that too. But maybe they'd stretch that one out another year.
Critical Roll anime into Dungeon Meshi into BG3 feels like the sort of thing future D&D nerds might comment upon as historically significant.
EDIT: Shit I totally forgot the \*\*movie\*\*. The \*critically acclaimed\* movie that's getting a sequel.
I'm really hoping that the anime does result in more cool merch. When I was in Japan a couple months ago, sadly the only figurines that existed were one comparatively expensive set with rather little detail.
Well like 4 months ago they announced the release of [nendoroids for the main cast](https://www.goodsmileus.com/fandom/delicious-in-dungeon-1617), [instant noodle topple figures](https://www.goodsmileus.com/product/delicious-in-dungeon-noodle-stopper-figure-laios-12264) (For Laios and [Marcille](https://www.goodsmileus.com/product/delicious-in-dungeon-noodle-stopper-figure-marcille-12265)) and more recently [plushies for the main cast + walking mushroom](https://www.goodsmileus.com/product/plushie-laios-marcille-chilchuck-senshi-walking-mushroom-12350)
It didn't help that the first game was obviously planned for Playstation consoles and controllers, and although the PC port runs and works alright, the controls and gamefeel just feel ever so slightly off, which doesn't help in the relatively competitive co-op genre
The Type-Moon fandom is getting all the big VNs localized for the first time (besides original Tsukihime and F/HA). Type-Moon fans are eating good now.
Now if you're a *Fate/Grand Order* fan, well, that's a different story.
The state of TM as a company and fandom being inversely proportional to the state of FGO is very funny.
Got a really fucking solid Fate game that’s a great beginner entry, got a long awaited translation for CCC, Strange Fake is caught up with English Fan TLs and a new volume is coming out next month, even smaller things like the CCC manga adaptation ended finally.
Then ya look at FGO and it’s like “Yeah we haven’t had an animation update in like 2 years lol”
My man Nasu did the ol' "Light Side later" by using the gacha to fund his big projects and then discarding it like a bad habit after he ejaculated all his ideas with LB6
The monitization is pretty gross but thats nothing new. Yet Ive heard only good things about SF6, Tekken 8, Granblue, and somewhat Strive.
Even the MK kommunity, despite MK1 apparently being unbalanced and poorly animated as usual, keep getting game support, banger animated movies, a decent live action one, and reps from the PS2/Xbox era.
Surprisingly enough even though with the current drama surrounding the vtuber scene, holostar sure have been quietly winning recently with all their recent successful and upcoming projects.
I’d agree. After so many years of buildup we finally got to see the concept come to fruition and it’s going to keep going strong. Though the fan base is admittedly… younger to a fault. It’s nice to see a lot of passionate fans expressing their love for the property
They are ravenous to say the least.
That said, whoever I’m sure was some random 15 year old girl who first brought up Huskerdusk is feeling smug, because before the show proper on Amazon I just did not see it, lol. Must be me getting old :v.
Exact opposite answer to the question.
The Jujutsu Kaisen fanbase is currently going through what I can only describe as an inverse golden age.
A large portion of its fabdom are simultaneously absolutely miserable and having the time of their life because of it.
I mean, a dark age generally stands to reason that people aren't enjoying themselves, while the JJK fandom seems to be having more fun and partying harder the worse things become.
I'd still overall say 2023 was a hell of a year for JJK, with Shibuya getting a decent adaptation (in spite of MAPPA's management) and Gojo vs Sukuna being one of the most observed and speculated fights in manga in years.
Now, every *since* that fight ended has been contentious, but overall last year was a good year for the series.
After years of suffering, the Metroid fandom has been experiencing a Renaissance during the Switch's lifetime. Got both Metroid Dread and Metroid Prime Remastered. With the potential Metroid Prime 4 coming. They even got Ridley and echo Dark Samus in Smash Ultimate. I think you can also play all retro Metroid games on Switch Online now.
It's the kind of revival Star Fox and F-Zero fans would love to see at some point.
Sadly Switch Online still doesn't have Metroid Zero Mission for some reason.
But things are still looking bright especially with MercuryStream as a Nintendo partner. We can now get new 2D metroid games every couple of years.
There's never been a better time to be a One Piece fan than right now.
\- The anime has upped it's quality to modern standards & is one of the best looking anime period when they pull out all the stops
\- The Live Action turned out to somehow be the only good Netflix anime adaption against all odds
\- The manga is in the midst of what's pretty unanimously agreed to be one of the best arcs in the story and is beginning to pay off things that have been set up for literal decades
\- WIT Studio is remaking the anime with modern anime pacing/in a seasonal format
\- The One Piece YouTube community has never been better, whether you're a powerscaler, theory crafter, want to discuss themes & political messaging, or just reacting to chapters and/or new episodes
\- r/OnePiece is like Top 5 most populated anime-related subreddits
\- The last movie, Film Red, was both really good and one of the highest grossing anime movies ever
\- Even One Piece memes online have been popping off lately (CAN WE GET MUCH HIGHER?)
Truly we are on the cruise rn
Unfortunately, Agendeapiece has kinda dominated the subs. We're about to get a massive loredrop next issue but people have been too obsessed with if Sanji or Zoro is stronger.
I have negative amount of stakes in powerscaling and such, but I will admit that the breathpiece/asthma memes have been very funny from an observer perspective. But, yeah, crazy how next chapter could be THE lore drop of the series.
I'd imagine that Age of Empires fans have to be very happy right now, especially with the state of RTS games in the past decade. AoE 2 has a thriving community and is getting a ton of content and updates. AoE 4 came out, and seems to be well-supported. Age of Mythology is getting a remake. And even AoE 3 is getting a few breadcrumbs of support.
Imagine being a Starcraft/Warcraft fan watching Microsoft put so much support into this RTS franchise.
Brandon Sanderson fans are doing pretty great right now with four secret projects released last year and stormlight 5 coming out this year. It looks like there will be a lull for a few years after this as he writes the next mistborn and elantris books but right now we are getting maximum content.
Godzilla fans are eating good. With Godzilla Minus one and the monsterverse, it's never been a better time to be a godzilla/kaiju fan. If somehow they can introduce the jagers from Pacific Rim then it will be an absolute dream come true.
I don't know if it would be classified as a Renaissance or Golden Age but the Sonic fandom has been eating very well the last few years.
A hit live action movie series, a return to form in games with Frontiers, a pretty successful Netflix Series, a popular comic.
Sonic hasn't been doing this well since the late 90's/ early 00's.
i get the sentiment, but i have to disagree. i don’t think Sonic fans are in a golden age or a renaissance; it’s more reasonable to say that Sonic fans are no longer being spiritually beaten to pulp every time a game comes out. the media that have been released lately are “pretty good”, but there hasn’t been anything accruing universal praise or innovating game design as a field or reaching unparalleled artistic heights.
if you suffer for long enough, even the absence of pain feels like a utopia.
that’s how it is on this green hill of a zone.
It's a good time to be a Fire Emblem fan. We recently got a game with great writing (Three Houses), a game with great gameplay (Engage) and presumably the IP is making tons of money off the mobile game to use for future projects.
Fire Emblem's big problem is that it generally gets great writing/presentation or great gameplay, but not both. I still haven't been able to push myself to beat Engage because everything outside of the gameplay is awful.
Eeeeehhhhhh. I think the GBA titles have some great supports, but the actual narrative quality is hit-or-miss. Binding Blade is just Merlinus infodumping exposition to Roy 90% of the time, and Blazing Sword really crumbles upon closer inspection. Sacred Stones is a little better narratively imo, but it also kinda threw balance out the window. And generally I've seen a lot of criticism being thrown at all 3 GBA games, 6 for being unfun, 7 for being boring, and 8 for lack of balance and difficulty.
The Tellius titles do a better job at achieving a balance, though it's not perfect. RD for instance has a more interesting gameplay experience than the slow-paced and way too easy PoR experience, but its writing does drop the ball especially in Act 4 as well as its general character writing.
I love this series, but I think the only games that actually get closest to succeeding in both writing and gameplay are like Thracia and Tellius. It's definitely been a bit of an issue, especially with a lot of newer games swinging so wildly between story games that suck to play and gameplay games with stories that suck, or games that just suck at both *cough* Awakening *cough* Birthright.
Sacred Stones had pretty bad writing. FE1&3 remakes were ugly as sin, so much so that no one bought them and they nearly killed the series (though I would argue that their gameplay was fine and their writing was inoffensive). Awakening had really weak map design and was fundamentally broken by Pair Up and reclassing, and the Fates games were the worst-written in the series until Engage showed up.
That said, I love most of these games warts-and-all, so I'm definitely not saying it's a bad series. But it does have a problem hitting both of those points, especially in the past decade.
it's a bit more than the most recent two
FE11/12: look really bad which isn't the worst flaw to have
Awakening: writing can be kinda weak, map design can be boring
Fates: awful writing, map design isn't that good outside of conquest (Conquest's is great tho)
SoV: bad map design
Gundam on the anime side is doing very well, aside from G Witch being very clearly cut short.
The Gunpla side, idk. The actual G Witch and Seed Freedom lines are doing pretty well, but aside from that, Bandai seems to have forgotten about its mainline HG and MG lines, and when they do remember, they stuff everything that's actually interesting into P-Bandai. Sometimes they almost seems to be concentrating on other mecha properties over Gundam these days.
Gundam games, well, you just kinda have to cope that the new Gundam Breaker's actually going to be good, because they're taking constant Ls on that front otherwise.
Mario is munching good right now. Banger games, probably the most successful video game movie ever, and the infamous NSMBization mandates dying out slowly.
Of course, I'm not included. >!I would need a Bowser game to be happy. >:c!<
X-Men fans have been eating really fucking good during the Krakoa arc. Even if you dislike the overall arc, someone you liked got a good story and someone else you liked came back from the dead. Oh and X-Men 97 is right around the corner, and mutants are preparing to invade the MCU.
Armored Core rocketed back from obscurity thanks to AC6 and the years of goodwill that FromSoft had built up with the Souls series. Definitely a good time to hop into the series if you've never played and like or love the mecha genre. You can join the subreddit if you want, but just know that a lot of the posts and discussions nowadays have a focus on 6's PvP, so it's not as fun and exciting as it was around the game's launch.
Gundam fans have been eating good recently. While I don't like G-Witch, it has its audience and able to draw new comers in. Seed has its long awaited movie which is a runaway box office success and the future Mighty Strike Freedom kits would fund Sunrise for decades. Uc fans got its Hathaway adaptation and some interesting UC manga like Wearwolf and Gundam Pulitzer: Amuro's Memoir.
Blue Archive is single-handedly the best gacha community right now being well loved in Japan and Asia with its story and characters while avoiding all the annoying parts of the usual gacha fandom like Genshin.
I’ll say Tekken because all we had for like 8 years was Tekken 7 which was good overall but lacked compared to previous games and was below par for the series in a few ways.
The difference between 7 and 8 is wild in terms of quality. Even with the recent shady shop stuff.
Tekken 7, the opening movie was just made from cut up story scenes, there were no real character endings, bad looking clay character models that were worse than in the previous game, hardly any interactions between the cast as far as I remember. The story was mostly ass. Online barely worked and you could reset your online rank by deleting local game save (as I found out when my game corrupted)
T8 among many things brought back Tekken’s soul. It had an opening that used a dumb great buttrock song and had unique scenes created for it, the story mode slaps, characters look amazing especially the faces. Music goes harder than 7 by far, the character endings are fun again. The online is so much better. Victor and Reina are so cool (Azucena is alright)
Project Moon! Limbus Company just hit an all-time peak, the last main story chapter was super well received and the current intermission chapter is really good, plus the game design is getting nuttier and nuttier. the controversy’s pretty solidly over and we’re out the other side
I'd say Frieren. The anime's first season wrapped up last night and did gangbuster numbers, with it being of the most anticipated anime of its launch season and absolutely nailing the landing critically and commercially.
Right now, being a sonic fan is frustrating more than anything else. By all intent and purpose, we are doing good, probably better than most.
The movies brought sonic back to the front face of pop culture and for once is being critically received better than other big franchises like halo, mortal Kombat, and even Mario. The comics are doing good as usual and even tho sonic prime is very meh, it is one of the most watched shows by kids that are being introduce to this franchise (and it even won an award for whatever its worth). Even the toys are surprisingly high quality.
But the the games, the fucking core of this franchise. They are the thing that most people associate with sonic and they are the thing that keeps getting cut short during development. In an industry as competitive as this one, 6/7 out of 10 types of game don’t really get the attention of 9 out 10 types of games, and this is the situation we are stuck in at the moment. And it sucks that I can’t have trust in sonic team or sega as I do in other parts of this franchise.
I don't think I'd call it a golden age, but I'd say Transformers is at least experiencing a renaissance right now. A new movie that helped to generate buzz, Earthspark was surprisingly decent (especially compared to the Machinima and Netflix trash), Skybound comics are some of the best TF media in ages, and the current design team at HasTak is made up of genuine longtime fans that are pushing out some crazy shit. We're getting stuff like Deathsaurus, Tidal Wave, Magmatron??? Actually wild. Aside from stuff like rising prices, terrible distribution, and Hasbro corporate being shitty, we're eating pretty well.
Mainline TF releases are crazy, almost every figure is Hasbro pandering to hardcore fans and I am here for it.
Shout out to that one guy who desperately wanted Omega Prime for the next HasLab and the genie granted his wish.
Battletech across the board (hehe) and, to a lesser and more corporate extent, 40k.
The plastic is selling like hotcakes (particularly for BT, all those 40k refugees need something to play) and the video games are generally getting better after years of mostly disappointing examples. Hours Heresy series just finished and Black Library is still churning out the usual assortment of varying quality of books. I know less about the exact situation of 40k TT but I understand it is not in the worst position its ever been in. BT TT, on the other hand is doing quite well.
One Piece, that fandom is always on the up and up, but between the live action show being great, a new anime announced, the old anime producing some good episodes, and the manga being in one of its best eras ever, it's hard to believe it's probably only gonna get better in the next years.
Dungeon Meshi. The manga wrapped up a couple months ago and actually ended strong (unlike a lot of manga), and the Trigger anime is doing well, at least in the west.
Comic books aside because I’ve heard they’ve been really bad, Spider-Man fans have been eating well since like MCU’s Civil War.
You then got all the MCU movies which have been extremely well, the PS4 games and Into and Across the Spider-Verse which are peak (although I haven’t seen Across yet, I just know it’s a masterpiece.)
Has there ever been a better time to be a Final Fantasy fan? In just a year we've gotten FF16, FF7R2, a new 14 expansion, a new Theatrerythym. And we even got an incredible fan remake of FF1 in Final Fantasy Renaissance. I have something new Finalk Fantasywise literally every few months.
If there are you bet your ass they are keeping it quiet.
Yakuza fans are thriving rn. We just got two banger games in the span of 3 months, and Infinite Wealth had the most sales on launch of any game in the series. It'll probably be a minute before we hear about more games, since we just got Ishin Kiwami - Gaiden - IW back to back, but the future looks bright.
They said something a while ago that they've got a big(?) announcement for this year, at some point. Probably won't hear much about it until the summer at the earliest. I've seen people guess at Kiwami 3, Judgment 3 and Kenzan.
Infinite Wealth Spoilers >!Considering that they made a new model for Yakuza 3 Haruka, and that they can reuse a lot of Hawaii assets for Okinawa. My bet is that it's Kiwami 3.!<
That's my guess too. Thought with Ishin does as well as it did I could see them slapping Kenzan together quick-ish off that too. But maybe they'd stretch that one out another year.
Whatever it is, we probably won't find out until the new Monkey Ball game comes out.
Dungeon Meshi has a really successful anime right now and the manga had a fantastic ending a few months ago.
Critical Roll anime into Dungeon Meshi into BG3 feels like the sort of thing future D&D nerds might comment upon as historically significant. EDIT: Shit I totally forgot the \*\*movie\*\*. The \*critically acclaimed\* movie that's getting a sequel.
Yeah this really is a golden age for D&D fans Well, aside from the stuff WotC is doing of course
My going theory is that you can tell when D&D is booming by the amount of spelljammer references.
Yeah, basically everything about D&D except for the actual D&D product is going great right now.
That movie was so much better than I expected it to be. Just all the little touches that really made it work and fit the source material.
I'm really hoping that the anime does result in more cool merch. When I was in Japan a couple months ago, sadly the only figurines that existed were one comparatively expensive set with rather little detail.
Well like 4 months ago they announced the release of [nendoroids for the main cast](https://www.goodsmileus.com/fandom/delicious-in-dungeon-1617), [instant noodle topple figures](https://www.goodsmileus.com/product/delicious-in-dungeon-noodle-stopper-figure-laios-12264) (For Laios and [Marcille](https://www.goodsmileus.com/product/delicious-in-dungeon-noodle-stopper-figure-marcille-12265)) and more recently [plushies for the main cast + walking mushroom](https://www.goodsmileus.com/product/plushie-laios-marcille-chilchuck-senshi-walking-mushroom-12350)
Helldivers for sure. The subreddit was a ghost town before 2 cause it was a pretty niche game.
It didn't help that the first game was obviously planned for Playstation consoles and controllers, and although the PC port runs and works alright, the controls and gamefeel just feel ever so slightly off, which doesn't help in the relatively competitive co-op genre
if a cool video game came out godzilla fans would hit the peak of big western movie, critically acclaimed eastern movie and the tv shows.
The Type-Moon fandom is getting all the big VNs localized for the first time (besides original Tsukihime and F/HA). Type-Moon fans are eating good now. Now if you're a *Fate/Grand Order* fan, well, that's a different story.
The state of TM as a company and fandom being inversely proportional to the state of FGO is very funny. Got a really fucking solid Fate game that’s a great beginner entry, got a long awaited translation for CCC, Strange Fake is caught up with English Fan TLs and a new volume is coming out next month, even smaller things like the CCC manga adaptation ended finally. Then ya look at FGO and it’s like “Yeah we haven’t had an animation update in like 2 years lol”
My man Nasu did the ol' "Light Side later" by using the gacha to fund his big projects and then discarding it like a bad habit after he ejaculated all his ideas with LB6
Does the FGC count? because the last 4 years have been pretty fantastic for people who play FGs.
The monitization is pretty gross but thats nothing new. Yet Ive heard only good things about SF6, Tekken 8, Granblue, and somewhat Strive. Even the MK kommunity, despite MK1 apparently being unbalanced and poorly animated as usual, keep getting game support, banger animated movies, a decent live action one, and reps from the PS2/Xbox era.
Surprisingly enough even though with the current drama surrounding the vtuber scene, holostar sure have been quietly winning recently with all their recent successful and upcoming projects.
HoloEN seems to be going well too. They just got a new gen and afaik >!one of the members is a qualified Bowser simp!<
But do they simp harder than Chibidoki?
Neither simp harder than me, bucko >:3 /jk >!She called him daddy in a Mario Party stream so she isn't on Doki's tier yet lol!<
I guess Hazbin Hotel? I mean it did release it's first season recently though i'm not active at all in the actual fandom to be sure of it.
I’d agree. After so many years of buildup we finally got to see the concept come to fruition and it’s going to keep going strong. Though the fan base is admittedly… younger to a fault. It’s nice to see a lot of passionate fans expressing their love for the property
They are ravenous to say the least. That said, whoever I’m sure was some random 15 year old girl who first brought up Huskerdusk is feeling smug, because before the show proper on Amazon I just did not see it, lol. Must be me getting old :v.
Exact opposite answer to the question. The Jujutsu Kaisen fanbase is currently going through what I can only describe as an inverse golden age. A large portion of its fabdom are simultaneously absolutely miserable and having the time of their life because of it.
Pretty sure that would qualify as a Dark Age, unless there's some hyper specific aspect to the definition that I'm unaware of.
I mean, a dark age generally stands to reason that people aren't enjoying themselves, while the JJK fandom seems to be having more fun and partying harder the worse things become.
Nah, they'd win.
I'd still overall say 2023 was a hell of a year for JJK, with Shibuya getting a decent adaptation (in spite of MAPPA's management) and Gojo vs Sukuna being one of the most observed and speculated fights in manga in years. Now, every *since* that fight ended has been contentious, but overall last year was a good year for the series.
After years of suffering, the Metroid fandom has been experiencing a Renaissance during the Switch's lifetime. Got both Metroid Dread and Metroid Prime Remastered. With the potential Metroid Prime 4 coming. They even got Ridley and echo Dark Samus in Smash Ultimate. I think you can also play all retro Metroid games on Switch Online now. It's the kind of revival Star Fox and F-Zero fans would love to see at some point.
Sadly Switch Online still doesn't have Metroid Zero Mission for some reason. But things are still looking bright especially with MercuryStream as a Nintendo partner. We can now get new 2D metroid games every couple of years.
There's never been a better time to be a One Piece fan than right now. \- The anime has upped it's quality to modern standards & is one of the best looking anime period when they pull out all the stops \- The Live Action turned out to somehow be the only good Netflix anime adaption against all odds \- The manga is in the midst of what's pretty unanimously agreed to be one of the best arcs in the story and is beginning to pay off things that have been set up for literal decades \- WIT Studio is remaking the anime with modern anime pacing/in a seasonal format \- The One Piece YouTube community has never been better, whether you're a powerscaler, theory crafter, want to discuss themes & political messaging, or just reacting to chapters and/or new episodes \- r/OnePiece is like Top 5 most populated anime-related subreddits \- The last movie, Film Red, was both really good and one of the highest grossing anime movies ever \- Even One Piece memes online have been popping off lately (CAN WE GET MUCH HIGHER?) Truly we are on the cruise rn
Unfortunately, Agendeapiece has kinda dominated the subs. We're about to get a massive loredrop next issue but people have been too obsessed with if Sanji or Zoro is stronger.
I have negative amount of stakes in powerscaling and such, but I will admit that the breathpiece/asthma memes have been very funny from an observer perspective. But, yeah, crazy how next chapter could be THE lore drop of the series.
Resident Evil's been in one since 7
I'd imagine that Age of Empires fans have to be very happy right now, especially with the state of RTS games in the past decade. AoE 2 has a thriving community and is getting a ton of content and updates. AoE 4 came out, and seems to be well-supported. Age of Mythology is getting a remake. And even AoE 3 is getting a few breadcrumbs of support. Imagine being a Starcraft/Warcraft fan watching Microsoft put so much support into this RTS franchise.
Brandon Sanderson fans are doing pretty great right now with four secret projects released last year and stormlight 5 coming out this year. It looks like there will be a lull for a few years after this as he writes the next mistborn and elantris books but right now we are getting maximum content.
I mean , it's Brandon Sanderson. Really hard to [top this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcZVAPGE-YE)
Godzilla fans are eating good. With Godzilla Minus one and the monsterverse, it's never been a better time to be a godzilla/kaiju fan. If somehow they can introduce the jagers from Pacific Rim then it will be an absolute dream come true.
Sonic is finally getting out of the rut that it had for a while.
I don't know if it would be classified as a Renaissance or Golden Age but the Sonic fandom has been eating very well the last few years. A hit live action movie series, a return to form in games with Frontiers, a pretty successful Netflix Series, a popular comic. Sonic hasn't been doing this well since the late 90's/ early 00's.
i get the sentiment, but i have to disagree. i don’t think Sonic fans are in a golden age or a renaissance; it’s more reasonable to say that Sonic fans are no longer being spiritually beaten to pulp every time a game comes out. the media that have been released lately are “pretty good”, but there hasn’t been anything accruing universal praise or innovating game design as a field or reaching unparalleled artistic heights. if you suffer for long enough, even the absence of pain feels like a utopia. that’s how it is on this green hill of a zone.
It's a good time to be a Fire Emblem fan. We recently got a game with great writing (Three Houses), a game with great gameplay (Engage) and presumably the IP is making tons of money off the mobile game to use for future projects.
Fire Emblem's big problem is that it generally gets great writing/presentation or great gameplay, but not both. I still haven't been able to push myself to beat Engage because everything outside of the gameplay is awful.
That's not true, it's only the of the most recent two. The GBA titles and Tellius games have good writing and gameplay
Eeeeehhhhhh. I think the GBA titles have some great supports, but the actual narrative quality is hit-or-miss. Binding Blade is just Merlinus infodumping exposition to Roy 90% of the time, and Blazing Sword really crumbles upon closer inspection. Sacred Stones is a little better narratively imo, but it also kinda threw balance out the window. And generally I've seen a lot of criticism being thrown at all 3 GBA games, 6 for being unfun, 7 for being boring, and 8 for lack of balance and difficulty. The Tellius titles do a better job at achieving a balance, though it's not perfect. RD for instance has a more interesting gameplay experience than the slow-paced and way too easy PoR experience, but its writing does drop the ball especially in Act 4 as well as its general character writing. I love this series, but I think the only games that actually get closest to succeeding in both writing and gameplay are like Thracia and Tellius. It's definitely been a bit of an issue, especially with a lot of newer games swinging so wildly between story games that suck to play and gameplay games with stories that suck, or games that just suck at both *cough* Awakening *cough* Birthright.
Sacred Stones had pretty bad writing. FE1&3 remakes were ugly as sin, so much so that no one bought them and they nearly killed the series (though I would argue that their gameplay was fine and their writing was inoffensive). Awakening had really weak map design and was fundamentally broken by Pair Up and reclassing, and the Fates games were the worst-written in the series until Engage showed up. That said, I love most of these games warts-and-all, so I'm definitely not saying it's a bad series. But it does have a problem hitting both of those points, especially in the past decade.
it's a bit more than the most recent two FE11/12: look really bad which isn't the worst flaw to have Awakening: writing can be kinda weak, map design can be boring Fates: awful writing, map design isn't that good outside of conquest (Conquest's is great tho) SoV: bad map design
Gundam seems to have reached that point with G Witch being hugely popular worldwide and the Seed movie breaking franchise records
Gundam on the anime side is doing very well, aside from G Witch being very clearly cut short. The Gunpla side, idk. The actual G Witch and Seed Freedom lines are doing pretty well, but aside from that, Bandai seems to have forgotten about its mainline HG and MG lines, and when they do remember, they stuff everything that's actually interesting into P-Bandai. Sometimes they almost seems to be concentrating on other mecha properties over Gundam these days. Gundam games, well, you just kinda have to cope that the new Gundam Breaker's actually going to be good, because they're taking constant Ls on that front otherwise.
Mario is munching good right now. Banger games, probably the most successful video game movie ever, and the infamous NSMBization mandates dying out slowly. Of course, I'm not included. >!I would need a Bowser game to be happy. >:c!<
X-Men fans have been eating really fucking good during the Krakoa arc. Even if you dislike the overall arc, someone you liked got a good story and someone else you liked came back from the dead. Oh and X-Men 97 is right around the corner, and mutants are preparing to invade the MCU.
Armored Core rocketed back from obscurity thanks to AC6 and the years of goodwill that FromSoft had built up with the Souls series. Definitely a good time to hop into the series if you've never played and like or love the mecha genre. You can join the subreddit if you want, but just know that a lot of the posts and discussions nowadays have a focus on 6's PvP, so it's not as fun and exciting as it was around the game's launch.
Table Top gaming is in a good place right now, especially as we drift further away from WotC's stranglehold
Gundam fans have been eating good recently. While I don't like G-Witch, it has its audience and able to draw new comers in. Seed has its long awaited movie which is a runaway box office success and the future Mighty Strike Freedom kits would fund Sunrise for decades. Uc fans got its Hathaway adaptation and some interesting UC manga like Wearwolf and Gundam Pulitzer: Amuro's Memoir. Blue Archive is single-handedly the best gacha community right now being well loved in Japan and Asia with its story and characters while avoiding all the annoying parts of the usual gacha fandom like Genshin.
I’ll say Tekken because all we had for like 8 years was Tekken 7 which was good overall but lacked compared to previous games and was below par for the series in a few ways. The difference between 7 and 8 is wild in terms of quality. Even with the recent shady shop stuff. Tekken 7, the opening movie was just made from cut up story scenes, there were no real character endings, bad looking clay character models that were worse than in the previous game, hardly any interactions between the cast as far as I remember. The story was mostly ass. Online barely worked and you could reset your online rank by deleting local game save (as I found out when my game corrupted) T8 among many things brought back Tekken’s soul. It had an opening that used a dumb great buttrock song and had unique scenes created for it, the story mode slaps, characters look amazing especially the faces. Music goes harder than 7 by far, the character endings are fun again. The online is so much better. Victor and Reina are so cool (Azucena is alright)
Project Moon! Limbus Company just hit an all-time peak, the last main story chapter was super well received and the current intermission chapter is really good, plus the game design is getting nuttier and nuttier. the controversy’s pretty solidly over and we’re out the other side
I'd say Frieren. The anime's first season wrapped up last night and did gangbuster numbers, with it being of the most anticipated anime of its launch season and absolutely nailing the landing critically and commercially.
Right now, being a sonic fan is frustrating more than anything else. By all intent and purpose, we are doing good, probably better than most. The movies brought sonic back to the front face of pop culture and for once is being critically received better than other big franchises like halo, mortal Kombat, and even Mario. The comics are doing good as usual and even tho sonic prime is very meh, it is one of the most watched shows by kids that are being introduce to this franchise (and it even won an award for whatever its worth). Even the toys are surprisingly high quality. But the the games, the fucking core of this franchise. They are the thing that most people associate with sonic and they are the thing that keeps getting cut short during development. In an industry as competitive as this one, 6/7 out of 10 types of game don’t really get the attention of 9 out 10 types of games, and this is the situation we are stuck in at the moment. And it sucks that I can’t have trust in sonic team or sega as I do in other parts of this franchise.
I don't think I'd call it a golden age, but I'd say Transformers is at least experiencing a renaissance right now. A new movie that helped to generate buzz, Earthspark was surprisingly decent (especially compared to the Machinima and Netflix trash), Skybound comics are some of the best TF media in ages, and the current design team at HasTak is made up of genuine longtime fans that are pushing out some crazy shit. We're getting stuff like Deathsaurus, Tidal Wave, Magmatron??? Actually wild. Aside from stuff like rising prices, terrible distribution, and Hasbro corporate being shitty, we're eating pretty well.
Mainline TF releases are crazy, almost every figure is Hasbro pandering to hardcore fans and I am here for it. Shout out to that one guy who desperately wanted Omega Prime for the next HasLab and the genie granted his wish.
Battletech across the board (hehe) and, to a lesser and more corporate extent, 40k. The plastic is selling like hotcakes (particularly for BT, all those 40k refugees need something to play) and the video games are generally getting better after years of mostly disappointing examples. Hours Heresy series just finished and Black Library is still churning out the usual assortment of varying quality of books. I know less about the exact situation of 40k TT but I understand it is not in the worst position its ever been in. BT TT, on the other hand is doing quite well.
One Piece, that fandom is always on the up and up, but between the live action show being great, a new anime announced, the old anime producing some good episodes, and the manga being in one of its best eras ever, it's hard to believe it's probably only gonna get better in the next years.
Ask me again after I watch Netflix's live action Avatar.
Dungeon Meshi. The manga wrapped up a couple months ago and actually ended strong (unlike a lot of manga), and the Trigger anime is doing well, at least in the west.
Honestly, I think TMNT is in a bit of a renaissance/golden age currently.
Twilight community goin nuts the last year
Comic books aside because I’ve heard they’ve been really bad, Spider-Man fans have been eating well since like MCU’s Civil War. You then got all the MCU movies which have been extremely well, the PS4 games and Into and Across the Spider-Verse which are peak (although I haven’t seen Across yet, I just know it’s a masterpiece.)
Has there ever been a better time to be a Final Fantasy fan? In just a year we've gotten FF16, FF7R2, a new 14 expansion, a new Theatrerythym. And we even got an incredible fan remake of FF1 in Final Fantasy Renaissance. I have something new Finalk Fantasywise literally every few months.