How about instead of the very obviously paid for (in one was or another) ‘professional’ critic scores you look at the user scores? Because very apparently the players have a very clear opinion about whether or not the game is good (also reflected in sales numbers).

Now I haven’t played the game and I never had any intention to, I also haven’t played any other Dragon Age game but from the player reviews I’ve seen the game:

• deviated too much from previous Dragon Age themes, in the process (allegedly) massively disrespecting characters
• had highly repetetive gameplay
• too limited player choices (often critizised: no way to kill/kick out companions up until the very final unlike how in bg3 you can just flat out kill your potential companions if you so wish to)
• incompetent (ally) AI masked by invulnerability and high HP pools (plenty of video proof here) -and as the cherry on top: a very thorough venture into gender politics implying that said politics were more deserving of dev time than the above issues

Regarding their next ‘actual’ rank I still think they would evaluate a bit lower than where Alexandria should be simply because Rozemyne’s library strategy will take some time to take effect but once it does they could feasibly reach #1 and stay there. Alexandria as is simply is not focusing on anything that produces immediate tangible “duchy points” so to speak. Education and knowledge are abstract concepts that seemingly don’t influence the rankings nearly as much as hard achievements do. Though the latter is just a consequence of the former.

Not that anyone will complain about the Divine Avatar not dominating the rankings, which will just be another behind the scenes factor. Rozemyne very clearly can’t be bothered about her duchy’s rank and I imagine Ferdinand would like to avoid the hassle that comes with it as well for a good while. Up until some fool mocks his wife or their adoptive daughter for it, then the gloves come off, in the latter case whoever did it better run because they’re in for a divine crushing.

Hannelore escaping ditter is, let me check, yup certainly not an option. She’ll get dragged into it whether she likes to or not, this is still Dunkelfelger after all.

On Alexandria’s ranking I have heavy suspicions a certain scheming Gremlin handler has advised the Zent and the Gremlin to suppress Alexandria’s ranking for a while in light of the rather close connection between Aub Alexandria and Zent Eglantine. The country just survived an invasion/coup, keeping the other nobles content is a higher priority than accurately ranking the duchies.

I’m honestly surprised they can even use the DS name. I assumed Nintendo had trademarked that in every way possible

I’ll try to summarize:

• Gitea is managed by a For-Profit that apparently popped out of nowhere -> profit motive conflicts directly with FOSS and since the corp isn’t well known it must be assumed acquisition was solely to make money
• Gitea now requires Copyright attribution, meaning if you push code to Gitea in an existing file it ain’t your code anymore -> omega level oof for a FOSS project because this essentially kills any upstream contributing (as seen by Forgejo deciding to stop their contributions)
• This Cloud Service being offered when Self-Hosting Gitea is really easy, again -> profit motive conflicts with FOSS but now on steroids because a “core” feature of their service will limit their ability to make more money