who focuses on product ownership and right-to-repair causes. What does Google's new policy mean? Well, in short, you spend upwards of 1,200 dollars on an overpriced phone, and you can't even install apps without Google's permission.

Here's how it is supposed to work, according to TechCrunch: starting in September 2026, any device in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, or Thailand won't be able to install any app whose developer hasn't been verified by Google. Then, in 2027, this new system will go out worldwide. Google claims that more than 50 times the amount of malware comes from sideloaded apps, and this aims to solve the issue, but they aren't scanning the apps. This leads me to believe that Google isn't interested in maintaining the open source alternative to Apple. And this makes sense; it must be tough to make money maintaining a free piece of software.

Google's Walled Garden Dreams

For a while now, Google has abandoned their classic motto of "Don't be evil." This is seen in the ever-changing policies of YouTube, their playing with the search algorithms, and now their continued messing with Android. First, there was the locking of services and apps behind needing to be certified. This meant that if you wanted to use apps (specifically banking apps), but you're using a phone that Google has not certified, you are SOL.

It seems to me that Google is making another push into creating their own Walled Garden. A Walled Garden, when it comes to computers, is a digital space that has everything you need: access to the internet (or at least the sites approved by the garden's owners), any app you may want (subject to approval), cloud services, entertainment, etc.. In return for all this control, you get convenience: the computer works seamlessly with your phone, watch, glasses, thermostat, appliances, tablets, etc.. Think what Apple does with their products. In the past, Microsoft and Samsung have tried to do this as well, to varying degrees of success, but the integration between Microsoft, Samsung, and Google has never been as seamless as it is with Apple and their products. This is because Apple controls all points of production: hardware, software, and accessories. That is how their business model works, and is fundamentally different than how Microsoft, Samsung, and Google work.

Now, this doesn't mean they aren't trying: Microsoft tried starting with Windows 8 and Samsung has been doing it for so long that people no longer think that they use an Android phone but instead a Samsung Phone, and Google has had a lot of success with their Pixel line (even if they have always disappointed me), but the garden always seemed more free than what Apple has been up to, and I think this is just the next move to play catch up with them. This leads me to my main question: if Google is going to try to do a walled garden, and I decided I want to be in one, why wouldn't I just go back to Apple?

Android used to be the operating system people chose if they wanted freedom or variety. It had gimmicks galore: front-facing speakers, buttons on the front, microSD, massive cameras, small cameras, removable battery, flip, slab, QWERTY keyboard, widgets, and more - and that's not even getting into the modding community, but now that has mostly gone away. Now, from a user perspective, switching between a Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, or iPhone is basically a non-issue; everything works about the same, and everyone is copying each other. But if I want all the convenience that Apple offers, there is going to have to be serious cooperation between two or three companies (and if they cannot make a Google Airdrop alternative yet, what hope do they have?)

Future of Android

So what does this all mean for Android, and what does this mean for those of us who think that Google already has too much control over our lives? I'm not entirely sure, but for some, they will make the switch to iOS and start migrating to macOS (especially considering what Microsoft is doing) because the devices are about the same price, and they are at least paying lip service to privacy. But others will have to start looking for an alternative, and there are some out there: Ubuntu has a mobile OS, there is KaiOS, and there are a few other non-Android-based systems, and then there are the Android spin-offs, like Graphene OS, Volla OS, and the things Chinese companies like Huawei and Xiaomi are doing. Samsung could push their own Tizen OS phone - but they would need to do a lot of work to get the app selection there, or they could make their own version of Android.

Here's hoping there is a solution on the horizon, because I, for one, would rather not have to register with Google if I plan to get back into the Android app development game. Or I might be worrying way too much about this due to the rise of PWAs (Progressive Web Apps). Of course, if I start. using those, I would have to change my. phone launcher, but having websites that behave like apps, but take up a fraction of the space on my phone, could work for most people's needs.

What Is It?

The Minimal Phone is an Android-powered smartphone featuring a full QWERTY keyboard, a 4.3-inch black and white e-ink display, expandable memory, a headphone jack, USB-C and wireless charging, NFC, and a fingerprint scanner built into the power button. Coming in three different colorways, I opted for the Fusion instead of the Pebble that I initially backed (when that was the only option, outside of the black founder's edition).

Using the Phone

In the about a month that I've been using it, I have to say that my experience has been mostly positive. There are a few quirks and bugs that I will point out later, but once I got the thing set up, using the phone has been fairly painless. There have been some growing pains, as is with any new device (especially one that isn't in color and has an actual keyboard).

When I first picked it up, I was surprised by how light and plasticy it felt. For the past few years, I've been using the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G, and before that, I was using the iPhone 12 Pro, and before that, the Nokia 7.2. So, I had gotten used to using phones with a more premium feel. I quickly got used to it, and now the phone feels nice to hold and all the buttons on it are placed in a convenient location, so it never feels like I need to stretch or contort my hands in order to operate the device (unless I am trying to unlock it while my hands are full).

The user interface that The Minimal Company developed works really well for the e-ink display. I've seen some videos on YouTube where people kept the regular Android UI, and I feel like the animations that look great most other smartphones would be too much for this display, but I will stick with the default launcher (although I do have a wishlist of things I would like to see from it).

Everything feels snappy, especially when compared to the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G that I came from, which is nice. For the most part, all the apps I want to use do work (except for Notion Calendar and the Xfinity app as notable exceptions). The keyboard is nice to use, though I do wish the alt key and the shift key on the left side were switched, but that is a small gripe. I don't have another phone to compare it to, having never used a BlackBerry or a device like the Unihertz Titan phone. The headphone jack is nice to have. I don't use it often, but one day at work, I forgot my wireless headphones, but I did have a pair of wired headphones, so I was able to listen to my podcasts or audiobooks. The fingerprint scanner is also nice and quick, and I've only had to re-add the thumbprint once, but I have heard that others have had worse luck (especially when the phone was just released).

On the hardware side, there is one significant downside that I have noticed, and that is the wireless charging. The last phone I had that had wireless charging was an iPhone 12 Pro, and when I had that one, I got a lamp with a charging pad, and placing the phone on the pad caused the phone to start charging no problem. When I try to do the same with the Minimal Phone, I have to fiddle with it until the connection is recognized. The solution is obviously to just use the USB-C port to charge the device like I did with the Samsung Galaxy A54, which isn't a big deal, but still a little annoying.

When it comes to battery life, for my use, I am never hurting for a charger. Compared to the A54 I was using, I can easily make it a day or two without needing to charge this phone. This is nice. It probably has to do with the e-ink display, which makes me not watch YouTube and videos on my phone, but instead just use Audible and audio-only podcasts compared to the video podcasts I would play on my old phones.

From what I've heard and seen, the camera is absolutely awful. I personally haven't tried it out too much, and I haven't tried to look at the few pictures I have taken on a computer screen, but they were upfront about the camera not being great. This device isn't for the guy who wants one device to do it all and would rather have a dedicated camera with him when necessary.

Finally, the call quality. I don't make or receive a lot of calls. When I have had to make calls, there is a bug with AT&T that has been noted on their Discord server that prevents the call from being placed unless you put the phone into airplane mode, then leave airplane mode. This is annoying and needs to be fixed - not sure if this is an issue AT&T needs to fix or if it is something the Minimal team can fix, but it needs to happen. Receiving calls seems to work just fine, again, I don't get a lot of calls, but I haven't gotten any angry texts, emails, or letters about not being reachable since getting this phone.

My Wishlist

So, I mentioned that there are a few things on my wishlist that might be able to be enabled via a software update or on the Minimal Phone 2 or 3. I'd say, overall, these are minor things, but it would be nice to have.

First, one of the things I liked from the reviews I saw of the BlackBerry KeyOne and KeyTwo devices was the ability to use the keyboard to scroll down webpages and apps. This feature strikes me as a useful feature, especially given the always-present keyboard eating up a significant portion of the potential screen real estate.

Second, keyboard shortcuts for apps on the home screen are a feature I would love. I think this can be done via some third-party apps, but I haven't tried them out yet. Having this feature could eliminate some of my other items on this wishlist that relate to the home screen. I would love being able to map the X key while on the home screen to open up X, or the S key to open Substack, the T key to open Telegram, the M key to open Messages, and so on and so forth.

Third, folders on the home screen. The home screen consists largely of a list of apps that you choose that appear either down the left side, center, or right side of the screen. I personally have mine on the left. Think something like the Olauncher minimal launcher. This is nice, and it is one of my favorite styles of screen layout. But what I would like is to create a folder for something like social media and have that on the home screen, that way the apps X, Mastodon, Pixelfed, Substack, and MeWe can all go there and take up one spot on the screen, or I could have a folder dedicated to businesses so the various grocery store apps can all be in one place so I don't need to go searching for them when I am looking for coupons or sales at the various grocery stores I go to.

Fourth, type to search in the app drawer. Currently, when you swipe up on the home screen, the rest of your apps appear, and there is a search button at the top. Now, in launchers like Olauncher, there is a setting to open the keyboard by default when you access the app list, but on this phone, the keyboard is always "open", which I feel like should mean that I should be able to just start typing the name of the app. This is not the case. I first have to hit the search button. I would like for the search button to already be activated when I swipe up.

Fifth, color e-ink. I am not sure how well this will work over the long term, but I think a color e-ink display would be nice. I haven't used a device with a color one yet, but I see the appeal of e-readers (I think my next e-reader will have one). There are a few times that having color would be helpful, and I think that the overall quality of video on e-ink would still make it so you wouldn't want to watch a lot of video on the device. Maybe there's a way to make it feel like an older color newspaper or comic book? I don't know, this is the wishlist section, and the color screen might be the least of the things I want.

Sixth, better wireless charging. I mentioned this a little before in the previous section, but for the second version of the device, I would like to see this worked out better. I want to be able to place it onto a wireless charging pad and trust that the device is charging. Better charging speeds would be nice to have, but I would take the same speeds with more consistency over faster speeds any day of the week.

Seventh, ease of placing calls. Also mentioned in the previous section, not having to enter airplane mode for a second before placing a call would be extremely convenient and shouldn't be too big of an ask. Again, not sure what the issue is, but at least there's a workaround without too many hoops to jump through.

Who Is This Phone For?

So, given all the potential issues I've laid out and the features of this device, the real question that everything comes down to is this: Who is this for? For that, there are two central questions that you need to answer: Do you feel like you spend too much time on your phone doomscrolling TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Reels? And do you feel like you want your attention span back and be more present in the real world? If you answered yes to either or both of these questions, then I would suspect this phone and digital minimalism practices in general are right up your alley. If you want the best of the best and all the newest toys with the fanciest screens so you can escape the torment of the real world, then this isn't going to be the device for you (but perhaps it should be, because the world isn't all that bad).

If you are also the kind of person who wants one device to do everything they need, then I am not sure this device is for you. The digital maximalists who want to be able to control everything from their phone will probably find the Minimal Phone lacking in several regards. The Minimal Phone is the kind of device that almost demands additional tools. Want to take photos? Well, you will need a dedicated camera. Want to watch videos? That's what the computer is for. What about notes? Well, the Minimal Phone is pretty good for that, given the keyboard, but a physical notebook is pretty great for them too.

Final Thoughts

I've been enjoying my time with the Minimal Phone. Some of the things are a little more annoying now, like checking the weather and other stuff that really needs color, and I find myself either reading more text on Substack or listening to more audiobooks (I've been really enjoying the Terminal List series by Jack Carr) and podcasts rather than watching YouTube. Overall, the switch has been fairly easy, and the phone can be a good conversation starter. There were a couple of times I was at a local bar, and I had my phone out in front of me, as one does, and someone saw me typing on it and they asked what sort of phone I was using. It gave me a great opportunity to show off a new device that isn't yet another black slab of glass that looks like every other black slab of glass on the market.

To conclude, I plan on sticking with this device for the next few years, and I am looking forward to seeing what The Minimal Company has in store next. If you are wanting to go the digital minimalism route and still be able to use your two factor authentication apps, banking apps, and any other app that the modern world seems to require us to use, then I think this device is perfect for you, but you will need to be patient if you place an order - they are doing their best, but as a small company making their first phone, there are a lot of growing pains for the actual manufacture of the device.

The big thing that people were talking about with this announcement actually came out after the announcement, and that is the price of the console and the games. And this is (like a lot of people) my biggest complaint about what Nintendo is doing. The console was announced to cost 450 dollars or 500 dollars with Mario Kart World. This doesn’t bother me at all, although the Mario Kart bundle doesn’t really do much for me. I know it is a popular franchise, but the racing game genre was never my favorite (Mario Kart is enjoyable but not a must-have). Also, 450 dollars for a console seems like a good price - especially since the Xbox Series X costs the same without a disc drive and the Playstation 5 is the price of their bundle. My biggest problem is the cost of the games.

From what I have been able to gather, the games cost 80 dollars for a digital edition (which, if you’ve been paying attention, means you don’t actually own your game) and 90 dollars for a physical edition - but the physical edition might just be a digital key on cartridge that allows you to download the full game. Now, in my more naive youth, I was a fan of digital-only content. No more hassle of switching out discs or needing a shelf for my media. I could carry all my movies in my pocket, all my books on my Kindle, and all my games right on the console. But that was before these media companies pissed me off - like I said, I was more naive then. These days, I want physical media. I don’t want to have to download hundreds of gigabytes of data after I insert a disc or a cartridge that I just purchased. I want plug and play, like the old days. So, for 80 dollars, you get a digital download that could go away at any time. And I know what some people might be thinking: Microsoft and Sony are doing similar things, and they’re right. They are. But I haven’t bought a Sony console since the Playstation 3, and I haven’t bought a Microsoft console since the Xbox One. If I had a Substack when their newest consoles were released, I’d probably have a piece complaining about the 70 dollar price tag of their games. It’s just getting too expensive for me. The other defence I’ve seen about this price hike is that this needed to happen because when adjusted for inflation, a game that came out in the 80s or 90s cost 120 dollars or maybe more. To which I respond with the fact that for one, you actually owned the game, and two, growing up, I got a lot of my games used and almost never got a brand new game. I would go to the used game store, get a game or two, and then be satisfied with that for quite a while. There’s also the small fact that Nintendo games seem to never drop in price. I could go look at a game brand new on the shelf that came out two years ago for the Switch, and it is still full price (for reference, Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, a remake of a Wii game, is still over 50 dollars despite being released in 2021 and Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is almost 60 despite being released in 2023).

This leads me to something that has been perculating for a while but had solidified with the Nintendo announcements: modern gaming doesn’t seem to be geared toward me. I felt this way before the Switch 2 was announced, but there was always the thought in the back of my mind that despite what Microsoft or Sony are doing, Nintendo will just be doing its own thing, and if I wanted a good, classic console experience, Nintendo had me covered. With Sony ruining their first-party exclusives like The Last of Us and putting them out on PC and Microsoft publishing a bunch of boring, woke messes (looking at you Redfall and Starfield), there were very few things that interested me enough to buy a console. But Nintendo was off doing their own thing. But at 80 dollars a pop for a digital game, I am not a big enough Zelda fan or Metroid fan or Mario fan to spend that kind of money and only get an unfinished base game that is probably buggy and could be deleted from my library at a moment’s notice. And besides, all the interesting stuff came out on PC, and I am more than happy to play on PC. Then I got a Steamdeck, and now I have my PC games in a console package.

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So, I guess this is my lamentation of the modern gaming scene. I shall continue to enjoy Guild Wars 2 and my classic/indie titles on Steam, but it seems like the era of being excited for the newest release of my favorite franchises is over. I am no longer excited for Elder Scrolls VI or Fallout 5, no longer excited for whatever is next from BioWare, no longer excited for the latest Pokemon release, not to mention anything Star Wars. It is a little sad, but also, these things happen, and when it comes to entertainment, I do intend to take this opportunity to turn to the classics that shaped the things I used to love. I intend to read more and tackle the great works of Western Literature, classic Science Fiction and Fantasy like Chronicles of Narnia, Starship Troopers, and Dune. Collect the classic Sword and Sorcery and horror pulps of Robert E Howard and HP Lovecraft, among others. I may even decide to stretch my creative faculties with my own stories and work on making my book club recordings a bit more polished (and maybe some different videos).

And that about sums it up. My initial reaction to the Nintendo Switch 2 announcement and the feedback that was unavoidable in my more nerdy corners of the internet. It is truly bittersweet, but like what usually happens, when one part of life ends, another begins.

What is Brighter Shores?

Brighter Shores is a new free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game by the original creator of RuneScape, Andrew Gower. In it, you take on the role of a town guard of the town Hopeport, but are quickly given free rein to explore the town and surrounding areas. While exploring the area, there will be some quests to do, things to kill, items to gather, fish to catch, food to cook, and potions to make, among other things. While there will be comparisons to RuneScape, it does seem distinct enough to justify playing it instead of RuneScape.

Gameplay

Much like RuneScape, Brighter Shores is a point-and-click fantasy MMO. To move around, click on the screen to the tile you want to go to or click on the map (up to two rooms away). To attack, click on an enemy NPC. To gather something, click on the item you want to gather. You get the idea. Overall, this is a solid gameplay loop, simple enough to learn, but complicated enough to keep me invested in the game. There's not much else to say about the gameplay. I wonder how much this will compete when compared to RuneScape because if it is too similar, people might not decide to play it, but if it is too different, that audience won't be tempted to try it out.

So far, in my ~6 hours of playtime, my biggest complaint about the gameplay is that I cannot click on the map to easily travel from town to the beach. It makes gathering things a bit more annoying, and I am not sure why it was limited to two rooms. Still, it is better than it was, because the map used to be non-interactive.

Level Design

So far, I've only gotten to the second area/zone of the game, but I have explored most of the areas open to me, and I have some thoughts about the overall level design of the first two areas. When you first start the game, you are in Hopeport, and to me, it feels like only half of a town. When compared to a town or city featured in RuneScape, the town feels complete within the world. There are various shops, banks, and interesting characters, and the cities have a character themselves.

Hopeport on the other hand, has only a small amount of shops - and some of them are just to sell gear (looking at you, quartermaster), but currently, there's no way to buy new weapons and armor, and the items you need to use in order to gather seem overly expensive - I spent maybe 20 minutes or so buying eggs and making omelets to gather enough money to buy a set of shears, maybe I was just doing something wrong, but from my research, I needed higher skills in general to complete quests, so my only other sources of income was gathering items or killing mobs, but that seemed inefficient to me.

The forest that makes up the second zone is a bit better because it is a forest, I don't expect to be able to interact with as many friendly NPCs, and sure enough, I can't. In my exploration, there's a friendly hunter with a cabin that might have something to do later and a friendly dryad that helps us unlock our class archetype (I chose Hammermage, for what it's worth). Everyone and everything else is either passive or an enemy. I like this forest, it feels dense and crowded like an overgrown forest should, and I look forward to progressing through the forest more. Hopefully, I don't have to wait too long to find weapons and armor for the Hammermage that are good in the forest.

Skills

Finally, there are the skills. There are a bunch of skills that get unlocked as you progress to each new area. Each area has its own skills. The town has Guard, Gathering, Fishing, Potion making, and Cooking, while the forest has Scout, Foraging, and Woodcutting, and the future episodes have more skills. Each skill can only be leveled up in the area that they come from - so no leveling up Gathering in the forest, you'll be leveling up Foraging instead. This leads to an interesting (and slightly frustrating) issue: when going to a new area, you essentially start at 0. It doesn't matter if you have a piece of gear that requires level 18 Guard, in Hope Forest, it might as well not exist. This makes me feel like all the time I spent working on skills in the game was a waste as I completed the main storyline, and probably won't change due to it being a fundamental aspect of the game's design. To quote Andrew directly on Steam:

Therefore, we have designed Brighter Shores in a different way. We have gone with what we call the 'breadth and depth' system. It is NOT intended that you first 'finish' episode 1, then go on to episode 2 and never go back to episode 1 ever again.

Instead, it is relatively easy to progress to each new episode (breadth), but even when you have reached the latest episode you are nowhere near finished. Instead, you can at any time choose any of the episodes you have unlocked and continue to level up further in that episode (depth). Each episode also has harder 'side quests' for this purpose. These side quests are intended for the players who want to put in more hours, and give a further reason to keep levelling up your professions in earlier episodes. Over time, we plan to add even higher level side quests, so that your Hopeport guard level will keep being useful for a long time! The difficulty of a side quest is indicated by its number of stars.

The episodes are also heavily interlinked, so you will regularly find yourself going back and forth between them. For example: You might use your episode 3 combat to kill some monsters for potion reagents. You might then take these reagents back to episode 1 to make some potions, which you then use in episode 4. Once you reach episode 3, you can also start making your own weapons which you can 'tune' for use in ANY of episodes 1 to 4, further interlinking the back and forth between the episodes, and allowing you to rapidly gear up in episode 4.

This isn't so much of an issue with the gathering skills, but when it comes to combat-related ones, this takes some getting used to, and I suspect it will be a dealbreaker for quite a bit of people.

Final Thoughts

In the end, what do I think? I think Brighter Shores is a fun MMO in the beginning, but after progressing to the second area, the desire to start the combat grind over again is lacking. So, maybe I'll log in again after a few patches, which seem to come out fairly regularly and the devs are quickly working on tweaks and more to the game.

If you are looking for something new play, I suggest giving it a shot, it could be right up your alley, and at worst, you waste a few hours of your time, which I think is a fair ask for a free-to-play game. If you decide you want to support the game, there is an optional subscription that looks to give you access to the third and fourth areas, but I haven't looked into the price, nor am I sure that those areas will eventually come to the free players.

Overview

Early last month, I was on a Discord server and I en

countered a conversation about smartwatches. The recommendation was for the CMF Watch Pro 2 from Nothing as a minimal sort of smartwatch that puts the battery of most other smartwatches to shame. Now, at this point, I have been using my Samsung Galaxy Watch for a little less than a year and a half, and while I did like it, I wanted something I didn’t have to charge as frequently. And given the price of the CMF Watch Pro 2 was 70 dollars on Amazon, I decided to give it a shot. These are my thoughts and observations when paired with a Samsung Galaxy A54 5G and how they compare to what I experienced with the Samsung Galaxy Watch.

Physical Design

The first difference is noticeable right off the bat. Gone are the rotating bezel and two side buttons of the Samsung watch. Instead, there’s a replaceable bezel (which I haven’t looked into too much) and a rotating crown that allows you to access the apps with a click and scroll through via rotating. Coming from the Samsung watch, this took a bit of getting used to, but in a matter of about a day or so, I am no longer unconsciously trying to rotate the bezel to see my notifications or access my various apps.

My watch also came with silicon straps for the watch bands, and while I am not the biggest fan of silicon, it isn’t uncomfortable and uses the standard pins for switching out bands, so in the future, I can purchase myself a leather or metal set of bands and switch them out with no fuss.

The last of the physical design choices is where I think Samsung has clearly come out ahead: charging. My Samsung watch charges on a little puck that attaches to the back of the watch, and the magnets do a good enough job of making sure that it stays put and the size of the puck means you aren’t working too hard to get the thing to charge. This was a slight downgrade to my early Samsung watch, which had a little stand, and was even easier, but it’s better than what Nothing provided. The CMF Watch Pro 2 charges with a magnetic two-pronged attachment that attaches to the bottom part of the back of the watch. To me, this is less convenient than the Samsung solution, but given the battery life I have found it to have, it is less necessary.

OS

Turning on the device, the next big difference shows itself: the OS. The CMF Watch Pro 2 runs a proprietary OS built for it compared to the WearOS (formally called Android Wear) that the Samsung Galaxy Watch runs. If you’re like me and don’t use all the smart features on your smartwatch (I just use the notifications, timers, weather, and some exercise features), this won’t make much of a difference because all the core apps you’d expect are present. But, if you want to add mobile payment apps, music apps, or any of the multitude of other apps found on the Play Store for WearOS, you’re out of luck - and if those apps are key to your lifestyle, the CMF Watch Pro 2 by Nothing is not for you.

There are two things I wish were present in the CMF Watch. One is multitasking - I cannot start a timer and then go back to the home screen or look at notifications. The other I encountered for the first time this past weekend: automatic timezone changes. This past weekend, I went to the next state over for a fun day trip, and I found out that while my phone would update automatically the time changes, I needed to open my app to get my watch to recognize the time changes. This also happened on Sunday, with Daylight Savings Time ending: my phone and computer were updated, but my watch was not. I don’t remember this being a problem with my Samsung watches and is a minor inconvenience to me, but if you travel a lot, it might be a bigger one for you.

Features

Now, the features are where the Samsung watch really shines compared to the CMF Watch Pro 2. Given that the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 uses WearOS, which is made by Google, you have access to a lot more capabilities than what I have seen possible with Nothing’s watch. I am not saying this is a bad thing - I personally hardly ever used the media controls, the phone calls, the media gallery, the music player, or any of the apps you could get for WearOS. In contrast, Nothing’s watch has a music player, exercise tracking, phone calls, world clocks, and a number of apps I probably won’t use, but from what I can tell, the apps that are preloaded onto the watch are the apps you’re going to get (unless they push out an update to their watches).

With the CMF Watch Pro 2, you get four widgets that can be customized in the app with up to four icons (depending on the size of the icon), in addition to the watch face, of which there is a multitude of styles which should allow everyone to find one they like. This is unlike the WearOS options which allow you to add more widgets for all the different apps you download - but thinking back, even though I had maybe a dozen on my watch, I really only used four, and wearing the CMF Watch, I find myself not using any.

Both watches can receive notifications, but the way that Samsung handles them is better than that of the CMF Watch. The Samsung (and I’d suspect the rest of WearOS) watches have the notifications to the left of the watch face, and (and this is the big thing) are dismissed when you dismiss them on your phone. The CMF Watch Pro 2 has them under the watch face, so you have to swipe up instead of right, but the notifications will sit there until you delete them from the watch by scrolling down and tapping on the trashcan icon. This is a little annoying, and I wish they would dismiss when I interact with them on my phone.

Navigation

Navigation is another difference between the two watches, and neither is inherently better than the other, just different. With the CMF Watch Pro 2, navigation utilizes more directions. As I mentioned above, swiping up brings up the notification panel, while sipping right brings up your last widget in the series and the swiping to the left brings up the first. You can continue to swipe in either direction and you’ll eventually get back to where you started. Swiping down brings up the settings panel, and pressing in on the crown brings up a list of apps that can be scrolled by rotating the crown or swiping up or down.

This list is clean and easy to use, but by default isn’t in alphabetical order, which means that when setting a timer for a nice little 10 to 15-minute nap, you’ll have to pay attention a little bit to find the timer app. This is a minor inconvenience, and not that big of a deal to me, so I haven’t gone into the CMF app to figure out if I can reorder the app list, but if I am able to, I wonder why it wasn’t like that by default. Maybe it is by what they think are the most used? Either way, it’s not that bothersome to me.

Battery Life

This is where the CMF Watch Pro 2 really shines. I can get multiple weeks of battery life out of this thing, wearing all day (except for the shower), and all night (even while sleeping). With the Samsung watch, I never wore it to bed, and despite having the sleep mode turned on the watch to match my phone, I still had to charge the thing every other day or so. Nothing promised 11 days of battery life with this watch, and in my particular use case, they delivered in spades. I can easily go two weeks without thinking about charging it, and that is really convenient and the primary reason I decided to check out this device.

There’s not much else to say about the battery. Your mileage may vary if you use the calling feature or more of the exercise features than I do, but I suspect most people could easily get the full 11 days promised out of this device, and with that, I am more than satisfied with the battery life of this watch (could you imagine having a device in 2024 that has an 11-day battery life that is used all day every day? I don’t think my Kindles could even boast something like that).

Final Thoughts

In the end, the real question is do I recommend this watch, and the answer is yes. Given the price tag and the battery life alone, I think it is worth it, despite the lack of complete integration that you’ll see if you use an Apple Watch with an iPhone or a WearOS watch with an Android device. I think given that it is a proprietary OS built for this hardware, the developers were able to maximize what I think is truly important in our ever-increasing connected world: not having to charge everything every day.

So, regardless of fears that I may have of being too connected, I feel like the CMF Watch Pro 2 by Nothing is a great watch at a great price, and if you are looking for a smartwatch but don’t want to spend the hundreds of dollars being asked by the likes of Samsung or Apple and don’t want to wait for a Black Friday sale, I would tell you to seriously consider this watch.

Now, this doesn’t come as a surprise to me, AAA (and non-AAA) developers have been cramming this stuff down our throats for years now. Just remember last year’s forgotten RPG from Bethesda: Starfield, or from a few weeks ago the disasters that were Concord and Dustborn. So, some screenshots went viral on X discussing how inclusive the Veilguard character creator is.

I first saw LearningTheLaw post the video “showing off” all the features of this creator, and I suspect that this will be the nail in the coffin of an already weak franchise. In this video, the person is happy that you can play as a “non-binary” character and can choose between various pronouns, as well as show off top surgery scars for the sake of “trans inclusivity.” I for one was already probably going to avoid this game, but this makes it official.

And it isn’t just the guys complaining, women who actually play games are complaining about this crap too. This pandering is geared to those who were never going to play this game and turns off those who might have actually played it. Here we have Savvy calling out how you are supposed to be able to create yourself in the game but cannot give your character proportions that are accurate to your actual body. And below this, we have thatstarwarsgirl calling out the pushing of the obvious agenda, story, and gameplay be damned.

And finally, another post I saw, this time from Grummz calling out the fetishization going on here. Veilguard isn’t the only game doing this these days, but hopefully, it will lose enough money that the owners of these games realize that they need to put profit above their twisted ideology.

But I am not expecting that soon in Bioware given this is the game director:

So, until the lesson is learned, play your backlog, read a book, watch a classic movie, or just go outside and enjoy nature. There’s more to life than being sat in front of a TV or computer monitor all day playing a crappy game designed by people who hate you. So, enjoy life, these people can’t and there’s no reason that being a geek means you have to consume this terrible slop that they’re producing.

And once again, I am disappointed in a company I used to like. Years ago, I would have said that Bethesda and Bioware were my favorite developers, I loved the Elder Scrolls series, I loved the Fallout series, I loved the KotOR series, and I loved the Dragon Age series (among others). But Bioware is a studio that I would argue hasn’t produced a good game since 2012 with the release of Mass Effect 3, and others might say 2014 with the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition (I wasn’t a fan of that one, myself). And much like we saw with Volition, you can’t just go a decade without producing a good game and not get shut down, I wouldn’t be surprised if the news comes from Bioware soon that it’ll be gone, just a memory that hopefully hasn’t tainted their great classics too much.

Bioware: 1995-2024?

The other day, I was discussing the potential dangers of the increased use of AI and technology in education and was asked what I thought could be done to mitigate the damage. Now, I don't have any empirical evidence to back up my claims, but the ideas expressed here seem to me to be common sense, I come to these conclusions by looking at what appears to have worked in the past and things that I have noticed in my own life. All that to say, take these things with a grain of salt, but going all-in on these new tech advances seems to be an incredibly dumb idea that's going to damage kids' futures.

The discussion was started on Discord with some comments about new apps trying to teach kids but lamenting that the "overreliance on AI and the apps deprives students of the ability to wrestle with confusion in a healthy manner." To this, I responded about my fears of the new app from Google, NotebookLM, and was asked to give my thoughts about the potential long-term consequences of new apps like this: "I'm not sure, cause I am not sure how long it will actually be around. But in the short to mid-term, what I think we'll see is an increased lack of memory, an increased lack in the ability to create a coherent argument, an increased lack in attention span, and furthering of the problem of over credentialled people who know nothing. Basically, if you can get a computer to format your notes and write your paper for you, you'll obviously commit less of the information to memorization compared to if you had to write it out by hand." This is the backstory to the initial question that sparked this post, and now I will discuss what I think could be done to mitigate some of these fears.

Physical Media

I think the easiest way to mitigate the dangers of overreliance on technology is simply to not use it when you can avoid using it. I understand that when writing a paper for a class, you'll have to use technology to type up the paper or do research, but when it comes to drafting the paper or taking the notes that feed into the paper, doing it by hand will help you think. When it comes to notetaking, I've used a lot of different strategies throughout my schooling: when I was in high school, most of the notes were hand-written, until senior year, when I got my first laptop to type up the slideshow points on an app like Evernote. By the time I got to college, I continued this when possible, oftentimes by just importing the slideshows directly into my notetaking app.

These days, I am taking classes in my spare time, and while using Rocketbooks for taking notes I found that when it comes to drawing diagrams or being more organized, it is actually easier to format the notes on paper than on OneNote - as an aside, trying to import the notes into OneNote was annoying due to it not reading my handwriting and trying to get the pdf as well as the typewritten notes wasn't the best. For my next class, I have a Paperage notebook to take notes on with a fountain pen. Needless to say, I am looking forward to it. If you're looking to get more out of your physical notes, I have done some exploration, and these are the methods that I am using regularly these days.

Commonplace Books

The thing that sparked this journey for me was the discovery of commonplace books. A commonplace book is a notebook that you fill with quotes you find important or memorable. My commonplace notebook is a general, catchall notebook that contains quotes on religion, the modern age, beauty, suffering, success, and a whole lot more, but you could develop a commonplace book that is for a specific sort of topic, as shown by one of my favorite YouTubers ParkNotes. That YouTuber has other videos about different notebooks that I think more people need to watch and take inspiration from. Since I've started using my commonplace book, I've been reading more purposely to mine for quotes on various subjects, which is helping my attention span and reading comprehension. There's also a rich history of these sorts of books dating all the way back to ancient Greece, and there have been arguments about what exactly they are supposed to be for about as long as they have been around.

My commonplace book is a simple collection of quotes, I don't add my own thoughts to it - I think that's more of a job for a journal, and this way, I am more open to sharing it because my thoughts on a topic may evolve over time:

Pocket Notebook

Another type of notebook I use regularly is a mini composition book. It is tiny enough to fit in my back pocket, and I carry it, along with a pen almost wherever I go. What this notebook generally has become is a shopping list, but it's a catch-all book for temporary notes that I may need to take (which turns out, mostly consists of grocery lists). But, due to their cheapness, I don't feel like I am wasting anything by writing things down that I know will be scratched out in a few hours. I've also put quotes that I wanted to make note of when I don't have time to sit down and place them into the commonplace book, I've written down profiles of myself, gift ideas, and a host of other things. I've also started having dedicated pocket notebooks for various things - the most notable one is a pocketbook of prayers for when I go to church.

I have other notebooks that I use regularly, including one that's in my wallet that I use for a calendar, ledger, and for taking notes that are a little more important than my grocery list, but I think the two types of notebooks that I went into detail here are a good starting point.

Zettelkasten

The newest method of notetaking that I am trying out is something I found through the recommended feed on YouTube after finding videos about pens and paper, and that's the Zettelkasten. Specifically what Scott P. Scheper calls the Antinet Zettelkasten. This again is physical in nature, but instead of everything being in a notebook, the notes go on notecards (I use 3x5s) and then into a box next to related notes. This one is taking me a bit more time to get going, but I enjoy taking notes on the books I am reading on a notecard and then extracting information or transcribing the quote to a new card and relating it to other notes I've taken. I am not sure how well this would work for studying for a test, but after some time of compiling information, it would make writing a paper a cinch.

The nice thing about the Zettelkasten is that it can be integrated in with journals and notebooks, all you need to do is label the journal for easy reference for the notecards. This is the approach I am taking because I like having redundancies in my life, and I don't want to keep the information I find precious in just one location.

Developing A Love of Writing

Everything I mentioned above is predicated on a love of writing. How I am learning to develop my love of writing is simple: I write with an instrument I like to use on quality paper. My go-to pens are Lamy Safari fountain pens, but I also like the Pilot Precise V5 and Pilot G2 pens. I use the Precise V5 with my mini composition book because I am worried the fountain pen would bleed through the pages too much, but on my notecards and in my journals I use the fountain pens. You don't need to spend a lot of money on these tools but do know that collecting fountain pens can get expensive. The key is to find a pen you (or your children) enjoy writing with and some suitable paper to go along with it. When it comes to notebook paper, I am learning to love the dotted pages over the lined ones - this may be better for older students than for middle and elementary school age students, but I have found that if I want to draw a diagram or trying to format the notes, the lines on the pages were too restrictive for me.

Conclusion

Now, I am not an educator, nor am I a parent, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that instilling a love of learning and writing is important to try to counteract the lure of having machines do everything for you. It is my hope that some of the things I listed here will spark an idea that can be used to help children with their attention, focus, memorization, and a whole host of problems that we are suffering from in the modern age. I am not sure if the ideas presented here help answer the question or calm some of the worries, but it is what I am trying to do, and I hope that eventually, I'll have a collection of wisdom and thoughts to pass down to my children.

Audio Media

Before streaming became really popular, there were several different ways of consuming media that didn't involve the continuous use of Wi-Fi that wasn't as reliable as it is now, and as someone who fondly remembers those times, I think it's good to remind people of them every so often. Now, it is true that none of this would help you if you didn't prepare for it, so maybe take that as a bit of a wake-up call and heed my advice.

First, when it comes to streaming music, this is going to cost you a bit of money. Through services like Amazon Music or Apple Music, you can purchase your favorite songs, or you could do what I do and purchase physical CDs or vinyl records (a little more expensive, but I like my collection of CDs and records), then you can rip the CDs onto your computer and then transfer to your phone or (depending on where you ordered from) download the album via the included digital copy that the artists give you when you buy the physical product. While this won't give you the immediate satisfaction of being able to listen to whatever you want whenever you want, if you're stuck without Wi-Fi or data, you won't be that idiot in that Spotify commercial who doesn't know what offline storage is.

The next bit of streamable media that can be downloaded onto your phone or tablet is podcasts. In my opinion, these were never designed to be streamed, and offline listening is super easy and convenient. All you need is a podcast app (iOS devices already come with one) like Pocket Casts; then you can search for your favorite podcasts. The best part is that these apps are usually always free and any podcast worth its salt can be listened to on any podcasting app - just search in the app or find the link on the podcast's website and you're good to go.

Audiobooks are the final type of audio media that you can listen to without streaming. While most websites download the book before playing, some sites stream audiobooks (such as YouTube). Personally, I have an Audible subscription, which is great when I'm not in the mood for music or podcasts and want to reduce the amount of time I spend watching videos. Audible downloads the books to my device quickly and easily. If you prefer not to use Audible, there are services like Libby that are linked to various libraries across the country that you can take advantage of. Additionally, Project Gutenberg offers public-domain audiobooks for download. Simply load them onto your device like you would an album and enjoy.

Video Media

When it comes to video media, your options are more limited. Netflix and YouTube Premium allow for downloading and offline viewing, but that's an additional subscription you will need. You can download movies and TV shows you've purchased through Amazon and iTunes (or Apple TV or whatever they call it), but those services have potential limitations, that Sony highlighted recently (thankfully they reversed course after public backlash).

My recommendation would be to seek out DVDs (or BluRays, if you have a BluRay ripper for your computer), then rip them onto your computer, convert them into something playable on your phone, and then transfer it over like you would anything else. This allows for a couple different things: 1. You're not at the whim of the streaming sites and can always have access to your favorite movies and shows and 2. You aren't limited to what the publishers make available online. There are certain shows (the first that comes to mind is the 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist) that are out of print on DVD and not streaming on any of the big sites. This means that it effectively doesn't exist - unless you were able to get the DVD back when it was being manufactured.

In Conclusion

So, if you did lose your phone service and didn't like being without your media, consider looking into how to make more of your content available offline. Sure it will take some planning and a few extra steps, but when everyone else can't listen to their tunes at work, instead of listening to the mind-numbing click of the keyboard, you'll still be able to rock out. I'd suggest heeding my advice and looking into the things I've mentioned - or you can continue streaming everything with no care in the world until the things of this world fail and you're left with just a stupid overpriced rectangle that can't even make phone calls.

Now, Tiago's video is a pretty interesting overview of this new piece of powerful notetaking software, for it allows you to not have to worry about formatting anything when creating the initial note, then you import it and can get it summarized and organized through the artificial intelligence that it uses. And this is where I start to see some potential red flags. The first big one is that I am naturally wary of these so-called "artificial intelligences," the second is that I don't trust Google further than I can throw it, and the third is that I am worried about what this will do to learning and information retention.

Artificial Intelligence

Recently, new AI tools have become all the rage in the digital tool space. I saw a new to-do list app that has AI built in, Notion has AI, our phones have AI, Windows 11 has a new AI in beta, and MacOS has Siri hanging out. This is in addition to all the AI/smart appliances we are putting in our homes, and I have to question the potential overreliance on these tools. Sure, it may be more convenient for a refrigerator to tell us what we are out of so we don't have to make a list before we go to the store, but if the thing breaks, you're not going to have the organizational skills to figure it out yourself. Or it may be convenient to get ChatGPT or a similar app to write that book report for class, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of reading the book, taking notes, and writing a report on your own?

And that's where my distrust of AI naturally stems from. There are reasons for everything we do and for everything that has been passed down to us from our ancestors. Learning how to format a paper correctly, write a letter, or even write down a grocery list are important tools that allow us to function in society.

Google

Google is one of the biggest companies in the world and they have their fingers in almost everything we do on the internet. If you want to write a paper, chances are you're going to use Google Docs, post a video, or watch a video, you'll be on YouTube, write an email, you're going to be on Gmail, search the internet, you'll go to Google, download an app from the most popular app store in the world, you'll be going through Google. This means Google has access to a lot of information and a lot of internet traffic, which makes it great for building a tool like this. It can study basically all of the users of the internet to form natural sentences and provide accurate results.

The problem for me comes with the fact that it is Google doing this. According to the video, all the documents you put into NotebookLM are stored in short-term memory and are deleted when you close the notebook or the app. This might be true for now, when the product is still new, but a project this resource-intensive will need to see a return on investment. This to me means one of two things: either they will scrape your documents for information that they will use to continue to grow the app in the future, or they will integrate it into another app (like Google Keep or Google Docs) and kill off NotebookLM, and given Google's track record with new apps, I am not sure which is more likely. All this to say, even if I wasn't concerned about Google getting more of my information (and I am), as a guy who pays attention to tech, I'd be wary about using a new Google app.

This wariness of Google seems to be well-founded given the recent controversy with the Gemini AI that powers this app, and I am not sure I would want it summarizing my documents for me. But that's just me, you may be able to trust that AI to generate a good and accurate summary of your documents, but I cannot.

Information Retention

This brings me to my third point, and one a little more philosophical: the idea of information retention and knowledge. If you examine historical people, you'll find that the average person was fairly uneducated in our modern sense but knew basically everything possible about things that actually affected his life, and the upper-class people were more educated in our modern sense. Now, we are the most educated people on the planet, but we seem to be stupider than ever. I believe that this is, in part, due to an overreliance on technology, and using an AI tool to format and summarize our notes for us won't help anything.

When it comes to note-taking, everyone basically agrees that writing stuff down by hand is better than typing it onto the computer or using a stylus on a tablet (and from an aesthetic point of view, nothing beats writing down something on good paper with a good pen). There are a few apps that try to do both. The first two that come to mind are the ReMarkable line of tablets, which promise paper texture and flexibility, with the digital convenience of not carrying around several notebooks, and Rocketbook, which has special paper and QR codes that you can scan then erase and then send to your digital notetaking app.

I haven't used ReMarkable and I have plenty of Rocketbooks. My biggest problem with Rocketbook is the app leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to trying to translate my handwriting and displaying the PDF with a transcription next to it in OneNote. Maybe this is a problem with my handwriting, their app, or OneNote, I'm not sure, but what I do know is that something is lost in the conversion from physical to digital. And I am worried that even more will be lost with tools like this that allow you to just text dump with no formatting and then allow a machine to do it for you. I wonder what can actually be retained by the human operator and how easily can you recall the information in casual conversation or when it comes time for the exam. This is also true when you have the machine write the paper for you. Sure, you might be able to get a good grade (if the teachers haven't developed a way to detect machine-written papers), but what do you actually know about the subject?

Bottom Line

At the end of the day, as a tech enthusiast, I am interested in seeing reviews of new products such as this, but I have my concerns about the underlying technology. If you'd asked me about this ten years ago, I would be all for it, but as time has progressed, I have become more wary of technology. I want to like a lot of these digital notetaking apps, and I've used several: most of my notes from my time at college are in OneNote, some are in Evernote, and I tried out Notion and Obsidian for more recent stuff. But I keep coming back to notebooks and notecards. Sure, those might not be as convenient, and I have to carry more stuff around with me, but at least I know that Big Tech isn't scraping all my data for information and that my summaries are my own.

Gameplay

Seeing as this is a video game, before we get to the story and some of the truly fantastical elements, we should first cover the gameplay and mechanics present in the game. The core gameplay seems solid from what I've experienced, although it would probably be better if I had hooked up my Bluetooth controller to my computer. It has standard WASD movement, Q is block, Control is dodge, R is the revealing charm, G is heal, F interacts with things, the mouse controls things, and 1-4 activate spells. The most annoying part of the mouse and keyboard setup is learning new spells: using a mouse and keyboard is a pain in the ass, and it shows that the developers focused mostly on the console experience over PC.

The menu is somewhat cleverly done: it starts off with a book motif, which I like, then as you go into the menus, you get something out of the likes of Destiny or The Division, which I don't like as much, I think the developers could have developed a better menu and inventory management system if they weren't so focused on the consoles, but that is going to be a common complaint when it comes to the gameplay and UI.

And then I noticed a couple of bugs and quest design decisions. The first was when Professor Wesley was walking me to class. She bugged out and had her back against the wall walking toward the railing of the staircase without moving. The second was when trying to get my wand. The prompt to start the cutscene with Ollivander did not show up, and I had to save and reload the game to get the prompt to show up. The one quest decision that really stuck out to me as a bad design was when trying to find a hidden treasure from a treasure map. In this case, I was able to find the location based on the clues, but I wasn't able to complete the quest because I hadn't gone to the first location. This took me quite a while to figure out due to me being more used to treasure hunts in the like of Red Dead Redemption, where you could jump straight to the solution if you knew where it was, you didn't need to do all the checkpoints.

The last thing I'll say about the gameplay is about the crafting. From what I have experienced, crafting is fairly basic. You get are able to collect some ingredients for potions, and then in select locations (potions classroom and the Room of Requirementa are the two I've encountered), you're able to brew potions, provided you have a recipe. These potions take a certain length of time (for the basic healing potion, one potion takes 10 seconds). This is similar to growing plants. With herbology, you have a pot to grow things in, and if you have the seeds (which appear to be a one-time purchase), you can grow plants for potion ingredients or combat aids. Like brewing potions, it takes time. The first plant you grow takes 10 minutes. Now, I am not sure if it is 10 real-world minutes or 10 in-game minutes, I'm leaning toward in-game minutes, and that's what annoys me about the crafting, it just takes too long.

Story and Characters

Now, this is an RPG, so there's a focus on the story and characters with interesting personalities. So far (at the time of this writing, I am about 10 hours in), the main story hasn't truly revealed itself. You play as a 16-year-old witch or wizard who somehow slipped through the cracks when he or she turned 11 and just received your Hogwarts letter. Because of this, you're starting as a 5th-year student, despite being your first year at the school. This could provide some interesting aspects when it comes to what your character knows about the magical world, but from what I could tell, it doesn't - you seem to know a lot about the magical world, but the developers didn't go into your backstory at all, so I don't know if we were raised in a magical household, in a muggle household, in a magical orphanage, or a muggle orphanage (if we are an orphan). With that being said, the main story appears to be that there's a dark wizard on the loose that may be related to a Death Eater featured in the books, and the player character can see powerful ancient magic that a very limited amount of people can see and interact with. Now, the player character is busy attending classes, catching up on the previous 4 years that were missed, unraveling the mysteries surrounding the ancient magic, and stopping the dark wizard from accessing the hidden secrets of the magical world.

The character creation leaves a lot to be desired. This game follows the recent design trend that I first noticed in Cyberpunk 2077: you can completely customize the character to the point of stupidity: in this game, you cannot create a male or female character. You can get to choose from different body types, some of which are male and some of which are female, then you get to choose voice types, which consist of different pitched male voices and female voices, and then finally, you can choose whether you're a wizard or a witch, regardless of what other options you chose. And then, during the game, none of the NPCs refer to you as a wizard or a witch, despite what you selected in the character creation segment, and I am sure that it would cost too much more to have two different sets of lines when talking to you or in your presence, games in the past have figured out how to do that, and I think the developers could have figured it out too. After the character creation, your adventure starts.

In your adventures, you'll meet a variety of characters with various personalities, and this is where my problems with the story and characters come into play. Keep in mind that this game takes place in 1890 rural Scotland. One of the first characters I met in my play-through was an Indian, which seems weird given the time frame, same with the student from Uganda. Uganda didn't become a country until 1996 and wasn't a British Protectorate until 1894 - which means that this student wouldn't be from any place with Uganada in its name because of the timeframe given. The groundskeeper is Korean, the flying instructor is Japanese, the charms professor appears to be a Muslim or Arab, the owner of the Three Broomsticks is a tranny, and I met an open lesbian during my adventures. In 1890. This amount of diversity is outrageous given the year that they decided to set the game in. There should be no reason for the amount of immigration from the particular regions I mentioned to rural Scotland and the acceptance that they experience seems unlikely. These characters break the immersion of the game. It's almost like the developers didn't even do any research for the years they wanted to set a story in. If I was designing a game set during the Revolutionary War in America, it would be absurd to have a bunch of Japanese in the area given how closed off Japan was at the time, and it would also be absurd to include things like an M16 rifle. Both things would be immersion-breaking, and the amount of token diversity featured in this game is immersion-breaking. Other characters you'll meet include ancestors of characters featured in the books and movies, including members of the Gaunt family, the Weasely family, and the Black family, and there are plenty of fun characters to interact with (first that comes to mind is the main quest giver Professor Fig).

Conclusion

Overall adventuring in and around Hogwarts is fun and it's about time that we got an RPG that puts you into the shoes of a wizard without being tied to the games. My only wishes were that the amount of diversity was in line with the given year that the game takes place in, that the character creation wasn't so absurd, and that the RPG elements featured in the game were more in line with other RPGs like Pathfinder Kingmaker, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and other older games. I want more stats, I want a serious character sheet, and more customization when it comes to the gear - maybe that occurs later in the game, though. But the game design choices will naturally limit some of the customization, which is to be expected when you're trying to cater to the largest possible group and not people who want an in-depth gear system. If you're wondering if you should buy it for PC, I would say potentially wait for it to go on sale. The same goes for buying on console, but I would expect that the console experience would be better, so you might be able to justify the full price on PS5 or Xbox Series X/S.