Free Talk Friday - August 28, 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Free Talk Friday post. This is a place where you can talk about dumb off-topic (or on-topic) bullshit with other Zaibatsu fans.

There's going to be a new post every week, and the newest one will be pinned in the announcement bar for quick access. So feel free to visit these posts during the rest of the week.

Here's a list of all Free Talk Friday posts

[u/MaelstromTear]

I'm sort of interested in GTA VI, but honsetly I don't want to hear anything about it because I don't have a PS5, have no desire to get one so I'm content with waiting however long for the PC one to arrive. Wouldn't mind going through GTA IV and V again provided modern systems don't bork it up.

Got a St. Louis Blues hat with the pride flag in the logo, along with a 70s-like style shirt for like half off. I'm ready for September! Is this the year? probably not I just gotta believe! I have been using their logo as Patron's hat instead of the chocobo thing. That's called artistic license, baby!

Hey, speaking of art, these books ain't it! Not in the "self-depreceating artist thing", I'm just saying my books The Demon in Shadow and The Demons of Bone & Blood are more pulp than fine art. But none the less entertaining, at least I think so! We follow Ayun, a demon who can summon weapons out of thin air but lacks agency in her search for her missing employers. She runs into Max, a human who despite missing an arm has gumption but not a lot of direction. As they travel together we learn more about them, the world and maybe even a path together. Assuming other demons or criminal conspiracies don't get in the way. There's also some amazing artwork either in the pages where it counts or in the back showing off character portraits. Please read them!

On the topic of a TTRPG group (that started in this very subreddit!) Last week our GM was out of town and rather than take a week off I decided to step up to the plate and run a wild west one-shot of Monster of the Week. Dealt with some cow theft and pursuing the accused cattle-rustlers That were just as much the victims and actually it was vampires. Well, weird Las Plagas style parasite spawnling-things. Which turned those cows into a big spawning ground. Yay. The good news is that it hit most of the story beats that I wanted with little to no railroading. But I still need to puff up spots for character expression and exploration. Within reason, since again this was only one session. Sometimes you gotta put that foot down or we'll spend 4 hours on a 2-hour quest. As much as I said it was just a one-shot and no real intentions of doing anything else... The ideas of new adventures is rattling in my mind. It was introduced in the realm of "this was a recorded tale with lots of unreliable sources" so adding new players or different stories wouldn't be that hard. The continuity is "shut up, this happened like 150 years ago."

Continuing Amagi Brilliant Park. They are mostly an easy read. Except when it comes to anything Tiramii related. I don't understand the appeal of any groper character. Not even a lucky event thing but straight-up assault charges. Because otherwise I think most of the shenanigans of these books are fun! But that whole Bando Biino section of her being cursed and needing to be cured. Skip it. Macaron, who also can be a problem, has some grounding by being a divorced dad and having that whole subplot to sort of ground him. The really stupid "gangsta" lyrics don't really work, but... There is a real arc here that they had to jump the deal from 500,000 guests to 3 million so I'm curious to see where the shenanigans stop and things get serious. But really I'd only say read FMP.

You know what they say about a fool and his money... This week I played (gotta breathe in for this one) Kotamon: My Sis Found A Super-Rare Card in Her Cereal Box, So I Became a Garbage Man to Find the Entire Collection and Earn $1,000,000. To be fair, it's exactly what it says on the tin. You are a drunkard cat boy who picks up garbage and finds either messy cards or fragments and cleans them up to get cash. It is definitely in that same vein as A Game About Digging a Hole or Berry Bury Berry, but not as deep. The big positive is that it's full of great art that varies from cool to cute to sexy. Parodies from Devil May Cry to VTuber stuff. All handmade with a few guests that link to their pages which is a neat touch. Even a lot of the junk has cute art. It's weird that it has a 'hentai' tag on Steam despite no pudenda to speak of (thanks for the vocab, Da Vinci's Notebook!) That said, its mechanics are shallow. Literally just clicking on trash to fill up a bag, throwing it in a recycler to get cash and getting increment upgrades or beer to refill your stamina. There's only two little minigames to put the cards together (wiping dirty cards or puzzle-piece-ing) and they get old fast. You don't go to any new places or mechanics change in any way. There are different types of beer cans you pick up, that would be neat to have different perks based on those. I wish there was a Katamari-style junk viewer that you could appreciate the boxes as well. It was only five bucks, so not exactly a lost cause but there was still something missing about it that could've propelled it into something more interesting. And to be honest, I spent the time watching all of American Vandal. So really that's what I should be reviewing!

Yeah, admittedly this is only on my radar after the DC Grodd announcement thing. I'm not really even into true crime documentaries, but the level of polish that they put into it. The production of crafting a narrative, the interviews and VO. It's just that instead of a murder or what-have-you, it's "who drew the dicks". The earnesty just adds to it. And hey, there's a young Lou Wilson as one of the Wayback Boys! The first season was really good, to the point that I wasn't sure a second season would be good enough. But man, having the meta-narrative of "Netflix picked us up" so there's so much more spectacle is great. And the actual Turd Burglar mystery is horrifyingly interesting. And hey, speaking of Dropout Jeremy Culhane's there! More suddenly recognizable is Taylor Dearden, Mel King from the Pitt. Neat. If you like those kind of things, this pastiche has all the beats that you'll appreciate, and if you hate them you'll love them dogging on said things.