Oh man despite your warning I totally want to try to do this now.

@darthorange: haha good luck! Let me know if you make one.

Really interesting and revealing list Liquidragon. Made me realize how little I actually know of your gaming tastes. Honestly reasonably surprised to see Pokemon Red/Blue at number 1. But also that seems like a very understandable choice as I remember how big that game was so I also feel like I shouldn't be surprised.

So as someone who has never played a pokemon game, do you think those are games you have to played as a kid to really get how special they are? Their gameplay always struck me as a bit simplistic, which isn't bad, just the first series I can remember of that stature that seemed like it was intended for gamers younger than me when they came out so I never engaged with them. I guess I'm just curious to hear your thoughts about what makes those games great in general if you're willing.

I'm jealous you've played Panzer Dragon Orta. Panzer Dragon always seemed like an amazing yet natural concept for a series, and I was sad they never came to consoles I had.

So I did a list like yours once as a thought exercise, except I was foolish enough to try to do it for every game I can ever recall playing. I was just going to do a top 100, but I was in a groove and just decided to keep going. I chipped away at it for a few months, juggling and re-juggling the order over and over.

And what I found was most challenging for me was trying to maintain it. Making the first 100-200 is pretty hard, but at least you know "hey I really like these games" and in my case I had at least considered how much I liked each game a bit in some way (e.g. I like this Zelda better than that Zelda etc). So I had some preconceived notion to go on. But when I started to try to rank two and three star games across different eras (such as how Primal stacks up versus Operation Wolf versus Toxikk), man that's murky. I eventually got through that too.

But then I started to play new stuff and ho boy is that hard to figure out where to slot those in. Especially when it's a middling game, that middle section never feels that coherent to me. The Best and the worst, my feelings on those rarely change. The Middle? I can barely remember why I decided to rank Battalion Wars ahead of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.

Anyway That's my long way of saying I get what you must have gone through to make something like this. :)

@slag:

Hey Slag, sorry for the really late reply.

I think because you gave this list a thumbs up and you have a lot of followers, a few more people saw it than I ever imagined would, which, I know it’s silly but, got me a little self conscious. haha.There were a couple generations when I was, not by choice, on the wrong side of history. Not having a SNES or a PlayStation, well, as you can see, there are a lot of games missing that are considered seminal, games I’m still picking off here and there to this day. Also, for anyone slightly older than me with more perspective, some of it must make me look like the hypothetical guy Jeff’s talked about over the years that thinks Halo is the best game of all time. I know there were games before the NES but I’m just at that age range where everything before it seem like museum pieces.

This might be a weird question but how would you, if it’s even possible, summarize my gaming taste or what is your general take away from this list?

About Pokemon

I never really got into rail-shooters so I have very little knowledge about series like Panzer Dragoon. The older games scream early polygonal games so much, they don’t seem like games ppl should go back to. I ended up picking up Orta because of the critical reception at the time and I was very taken with it. Great visuals, beautiful world and monster designs, fun and perfectly balanced bosses, but the most surprising thing was the tone and the emotional punch of the game. I guess it was pre-Shadow of the Colossus but similar to Team Ico games in that regard. Hopefully Microsoft eventually brings 360/OG Xbox back compat to the PC. It’d be cool if more ppl could check it out, definitely like to play again myself. It’s kinda funny all anybody ever mentions about the franchise is the one off RPG though.

I think the top 20 or so, I’m pretty satisfied with and probably only needs to be reviewed once a year or 2 but anything under that, it’s just a snapshot of a moment in time. I could mess with it everyday and I don’t think I’d ever get it feeling quite right.

I totally agree with you. Comparing games of different era is hard but also, how to I compare feelings from a different era? The younger me was obviously more impressionable and probably felt things more raw but the current me looks at games from so many more angles and is far more aware of my feelings.

How many games did you end up getting up to? That is insane, you are a mad man. Do you have this list somewhere? Could I look at it? I don’t think I see it in your list page.

@liquiddragon

haha my apologies man. Well I'm glad people did, since you post a lot of thought provoking things. But certainly didn't mean to cause you any distress. I know what you mean, when I first posted GotY lists on here I just threw them up in ten minutes or so because I figured who would care what I think, but over time I noticed that probably a dozen or more people started to look at mine and figured I better up my game a little if other people actually read these. It definitely feels different when you know people are watching. If you'd rather me not thumbs up in future, I'd be happy to do whatever is best for you.

RE: what I see in your list- I think your gaming tastes look pretty similar what mine probably would look like if I was born later. Like me you seem to be a generalist who likes a lot of big budget games in a variety of different genres, often japanese games, but specifically a lot of consensus highwatermark best in class of a genre (e.g. you have Starcraft in there but not a lot of other RTS games, Metal Gear Solid 2 but not a lot of other stealth games etc). The game you like seem to have a nice mix of well regarded gameplay. narrative and aesthetics. Many of your favorites have pretty colorful color palettes (Max Payne is one of the few that has a "gritty" look) that eschew realism. There tends to be a lot of single player games in the list, not many FPS game or sports games. So yeah Stuff I gravitate towards myself.

If anything your tastes are much more diverse than mine as there seems to be less repetition of the same franchises in your top 100. Part of that might be a function of coming of gaming age in an era where game releases in the same franchise were less frequent and there was more choice, but it could just be that you have a broader palette than I do too. The top 20 of your list looks to be a lot of stuff that is formative of your earlier-early mid gaming life, which again I think is how it is for most of us. Most of my top 20 is the same way, I think only one game in it currently is from when I was older than 20.

That's what I see in your list fwiw. :)

re: pokemon -Thank you for the fantastic explanation of Pokemon! I think you answered about every question I've ever had about the franchise and I feel I "get" why the gist of why it's special now to so many people without having played it (the bits about Star Wars, real world analogues, the playground anecdote about the hunt for Mew and the link cable were especially informative). Sounds like that sort of understanding is probably also about the best I'll ever get too, since I can't be 10 again.

I think your story about what it meant to you is a fantastic reason to have it as your all time favorite game. That's pretty cool a game was able to do that for you. :)

Still if I were to foolishly ever try one, what's the best route as a crusty adult to do so in your opinion? Go for something recent like X/Y? or dig out one of the OG gameboy games?

RE: Panzer Dragoon- Hmm, now I really want to see Panzer Dragoon then. I didn't know there was more to it than just gameplay.

re:my list- Looks Like I got up to 862 games before running into the "I forget where the line between 3 and 4 stars is in this list" issue. If I had everything on there, it would be probably be around ~1000 games. I was trying make sure my lists was consistent with other lists I had made (i.e. if I constructed it correctly I should be able to extract any year GotY list or franchise list out of it in correct order), but ultimately I didn't make good enough notes and lost track of what my thought process was of the middling games.

And Yeah it isn't on GB. The fact they limit ordered lists to 100 post CBSi merger is a bummer, yet understandable, so it's not on here. Anyway I signed up for a website on a lark a couple years back called lifebar which is run by some GB fans since they seemed nice and wanted some feedback. Lifebar basically seems to basically a twitter-esque review site. Rate a game and review it in 140 characters more or less. After a while they rolled out a ranking feature and figured I'd try to see how far I could push it and myself. I liked their filtering and editing features a lot better than GBs list function, especially for something like that, eventhough it lacks some key features elsewhere.

This link *should* take you to it http://lifebar.io/#profile/9866/Slag/. If you click on where on my profile where it says ranking. Looks like you need a liferbar.io account to view though unfortunately. I've been looking to migrate it off of there anyway since I'm not sure lifebar is being maintained anymore and I don't want to lose what I have. :)

@slag:

Na, thanks for the recommendation, it's nice that ppl saw it. It is revealing of my tastes and kind of a neat summary of my gaming history but it also serves an admission of my many blind spots. haha

Oh, cool, thanks for the analysis. I didn't realize my preference for more colorful games. I gravitate towards super heavy, bummer arthouse/foreign films so that's interesting. I guess the color palette of a game or a movie doesn't at all have to dictate the tone of the work.

I definitely get more excited about bigger budget games. Whenever I'm playing an indie, it often feels like what I'm experiencing is pretty much all there is to it. The illusion of a living world gets broken fairly quickly. The figuring out period, the time when you’re unsure of the rules of the game and it’s boundaries, when it feels like anything can happen is, to me, the magical period in games. A good game with a budget can really maintain that magic for fairly long either by their narrative or world density, layered mechanics, or scope. That’s not to say a smaller or simpler game can’t be great. I just think they have a harder time burrowing into my pores.

I wish I could be more of a help in suggesting which Pokemon games would be good to check out at this point, especially as a newcomer. I do, on and off, flirt with the idea of getting back into the series so I’ll just tell you which ones pique my interest the most.

1. Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver (DS) - The remake of the 2nd gen games using the 4th gen tech. Many consider the 2nd gen to be the best and the DS versions would be easier to go back to I assume. Gold/Silver still very much resemble the games I fell in love with, the monster designs feel inspired and appropriately next gen, and the added features like day/night cycle and gender are good features and steps forward, making the games more complex but not too complicated. The bad news is that they have gotten unbelievably expensive. (Amazon has them for $300 new, around $50 used so sucks but yea...let’s look at other candidates.)

2. Pokemon Sun/Moon (or enhanced versions UltraSun/UltraMoon) (3DS) - The reception of the latest games in the series seems be very warm. I kept coming across many many comments claiming these are among the best, if not the best. It’s fully polygonal, they look pretty nice, and they’ve gotten rid of gyms and replaced them with other challenges so the new formula seems like a good place to jump in. They’re the newest games so they are still available for $30-35 new, depending on if you go with the Ultra versions which feature an alternate story and a handful of new Pokemon.

3. Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow (GB games on 3DS) - These are the only older games available for download. Nintendo finally released them on the 3DS store for the 20th anniversary. They got in the habit of remaking the older games with the latest games’ tech instead of just putting out the old games digitally. That means anything from GBA and before you’ll have to buy used. Idk where you land on used games but they seemed to be all hovering at around $20. These digital copies go for $10 so not much of an investment and they’re what started it all.

4. Pokemon X/Y (3DS) - Apparently the last games to maintain the gym formula. Seems like the consensus is that they are good but not as good as Sun/Moon. So not a bad choice it seems and still new enough that you’ll find them for $30-35. I think they are the 1st games to go full polygonal so that’s an added plus.

Looking at the prices, most the DS games except the aforementioned HeartGold/SoulSilver go for around $40-55 new, which seem steep to me, especially considering ppl seemed be a bit mixed on those games. I get the sense that Diamond/Pearl/Platinum are good but kinda like the series on autopilot and Black/White and B/W2 sound like ones for more seasoned fans.

Keep in mind, I’ve long hung up my trainer’s hat. Everything I just said is based on a short research and you’re probably better off asking other folks or figuring it out on your own.

Man, I basically still have to play all your top games. FF6 for sure I’m playing this year. I knew I was forgetting some games. F-Zero X definitely makes my 100. MGS: Twin Snakes is your favorite Metal Gear game huh? Really surprised.

@liquiddragon:

I think that color preference is probably partly a function of the medium and choices available to you. Fwiw I'm the same, give me something with bright contrasting colors. Personally I don't find muted or drab palettes to be very effective in communicating useful information to the player for most games. Unlike a movie, you have to act on what you are seeing. It's really only been in the last 5 years or so, that brown and monochrome games have had enough definition and clarity to make those subtle looks work. A lot of the stuff at the beginning of the Ps3 gen I thought looked real bad (tried to play Dragon Age: origins again last year and off that game is ugly now), but with lighting and such improving I think games can pull off that look now if they want to.

And then there's the fact that many games are made in japan and I don't think their artists think about color in the same way Americans do. Some of the more depressing Animes can still really have vibrant palettes.

I don't know if you honestly prefer colorful games, justa trait I noticed in your list scrolling through it that there wasn't a whole lot of drably colored stuff (say like a Call of Duty game or Salt & sancturary etc).

Yeah feel the same about AAA stuff. Part of the attraction for me in games is to see new things, or even just new leaps in production values, which frankly a big game put out by a big studio will have a better chance of having the resources to do. Plus Indie games didn't really exist in a meaningful way for me as a kid, so I grew up on the big stuff. I've gotten to like some Indie games, especially as AAA grows more risk averse. But there's just so many of them and even the good ones have really varying quality levels throughout the game.

Thanks for the in depth explanation of which Pokemons to look at! Sounds like X/Y is probably the ticket for me, if I play one I'd like to at least have some understanding of the Gym system which I've heard about.

Yeah here's the thing about me and Metal Gear, I like the whole franchise as a whole much more than any individual game in it. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts as they say. A lot of the games, I'm not even sure I like that much. I find the whole overarching narrative about Solid/BigBoss fascinating. I don't think we'll ever see something that big ever again. Yakuza is reasonably close I guess.

I came back to MG with MGS2: SoL after last playing the NES one. My feelings on the games are roughly like this (order I played them in, or didn't)

• Metal Gear- didn't like it at all on the NES. Came back to it later after playing MGS2 and made sense in a way to me that it didn't before. Respect it, but kinda lukewarm on it
• MGS2:SoL- wanted to play this to see why everybody was pissed so I gave the series another chance. Really liked the gameplay, liked the story but thought some cutscenes were way way too long, thought the bait and switch was funny but also didn't like Raiden's character or the idea of a cyber ninja guy. Liked the insanity at the end. Looking at my list on lifebar, I need to move this higher. It's probably my third favorite in the series.
• MGS:tTS- I think even if I had played the PS1 version I'd still prefer this version since the models are so much more detailed. To me this had the perfect fusion of gameplay and story in the series. Every other entry I played was deficient in one area or the other. The Pyscho mantis thing was super cool. Didn't go quite as bizarre as MGS, which I felt actually helped make it a better story significantly.
• MG2- didn't play this until MGS3: Subsistence. Feel more or less the same about as the NES game
• MGS3- I was all into the idea as playing Big Boss, but the controls were unbearable. barely played it. Really need to give this one another shot. One of the last games I played before a several year hiatus from games
• MGS4- DNP. On the backlog.
• MGS:PW- ditto
• MGSV: GZ - A pretty interesting tech demo , but its story and characters were basically unintelligible to somebody like me who didn't play Peace Walker. It was hard for me to care about Mother Base, Chico or Paz.
• MGSV: TPP - Best controls and gameplay in the series but goes on far too long, still haven't quite finished the game and the story is surprisingly undertold.

So MGS:tTS kinda wins with me by default. But this is a series I almost feel I need to replay, as each one I play shifts my feelings a bit about earlier entries.

I'll be curious to see what you think of FF6 if you get around to it. So much of my love for that is a time and place thing. Have you played many FF games?

@slag:

Yeah, colors definitely help with playability of games. I'm colorblind so I think I instinctively go for games that pop aesthetically but at the same time, avoid thinking and talking about them in terms of color in any detail cause I'm afraid to be wrong or inaccurate in my description. When games are a bit monochromatic, it can be really straining for me to pick things out of the environment.

I know what you mean about the early last gen games. Played Resistance 1 last year for the first time and it was very sepia like. I think it was partially game performance related but also a stylistic trend back then.

In some ways, indie developers seem similarly risk averse. The expectations for $15-20 games have been set and the scope of those games haven’t really grown. I’d like to see the more successful studios step it up a bit and fill that $30-40 market. It might be slowly happening with titles like The Witness but I guess it’s a harder ask for ppl on both sides of the fence.

It makes sense if you haven’t played MGS1. A lot of the hate comes from comparing the two. They re-recorded the voices with the same actors but the delivery was always slightly different. The cutscenes were over the top even by MGS standards but especially next to the original MGS. Gameplay-wise, the MGS2 gameplay was much better but they remade the MGS1 levels too faithfully without accounting for Snake’s extended abilities, making the game considerably easier. The biggest problem I think people have with it though is that it’s not totally Kojima. Diehard fans come to MGS for Kojima and because he only served as one of the producers, the game is tonally pretty different, noticeably less him. That might actually be a good thing for some ppl.

Your opinion of the series makes sense, especially if you take MGS1 out of the equation. I’d suggest not playing MGS1, Twin Snakes is your MGS1. You got to experience Twin Snakes in a way most ppl couldn’t but it's hard to say how you'd feel about MGS1.

I’ll definitely let you know after I playthrough FF6. I’ve played a good amount of FF games but I’ve embarrassingly haven’t played most of the ones the playerbase seem to think are the best. I was going to play FF6 last year but noticed that the PS4 wasn’t getting enough use so I ended up playing Type-0 instead. I also realized it was the last Fabula Nova Crystallis game I hadn’t played so I commited to wrapping up that crazy initiative. Now I have my sights squarely on FF6. Just beat Persona 4 though, so gonna need some time off of RPGs.

These are the ones I’ve played, I believe in order:

1. Final Fantasy X - One of my all time favs. I’ve been chasing the emotional highs of this game from not only the series but games in general ever since.

2. Final Fantasy 12 - Got super addicted. Played through it nearly twice back to back cause I found out about the ultimate weapon that required you to not open certain chests..still love the game though.

3. Final Fantasy 13 - I think it’s one of those games that plays better in my memory. Obviously the combat is top notch and the story is decent, though it requires a bit of reading in the menus to clarify.

4. Final Fantasy 7 - Pretty strong, especially the first 2 discs, though the last act is quite rushed.

5. Crisis Core: FF7 - Surprisingly good and maybe a candidate for one of the best prequels. Also the combat, while not great, should get some credit for being the Kill.Switch of FF action RPG games.

6. Final Fantasy 13-2 - Serah is not great but ended up quite liking Caius and whoever voiced him. Also, man, the ending might be one of my favorites in the series. Totally makes you think you’d get the “yay, we saved the world” happy ending and completely pulls the rug under you. lol I don’t think a lot of ppl like that but I thought it was a very memorable cliffhanger ending.

7. Final Fantasy X-2 - Fun game to play though I don’t consider it canon. It sits better with me if I think of it as alternate universe cause the story is meh. Another one that should get credit for its combat cause FF13’s Paradigm system is basically a streamlined Dressphere system.

8. Final Fantasy 8 - Has some of the highest moments in the series but the story crumbles and the combat is too slow.

9. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13 - Another one like FF12 that really hooked me. The story is in the “it’s soo bad, it’s good” territory but for me, the game is the high water mark in RPG combat. I can't speak highly enough about the combat, just exquisite. I thought I’d really not be into the time pressure of the game but it’s actually mostly an illusion and a non-issue.

10. Final Fantasy XV - I had fun while playing it but every aspect of it falls short a step or two, some parts even more.

11. Final Fantasy Type-0 - Kind of a neat fun combat, especially with all the different playable characters. Found myself wishing it came out here as a handheld game cause the structure really encourages grinding. Characters not good, story not good.

So, I got into the series looking for great stories but having played over ten now, it's more about the evolution of the franchise, seeing and sometimes accepting the uniqueness of each work. I think if you have just one idea of what FF is, then FF is not for you. I really respect that Square has the balls to redefined their flagship series with every iteration. Ppl that look at FF from a distance think they are all the same but I don't know another series that's as different from one to the next.

@liquiddragon:

Ah ok so color would be really important to you then for a much more fundamental reason than it is for me, quite understandably so. Yeah even Twilight Princess had a real muddy look to it in that era. One of the reasons it didn't hook me like OoT or Wind Waker (or BotW for that matter).

I don't know indie devs are risk averse as much as they are probably budget (and consequently manpower) constrained in the same ways game companies were in the eras they often quasi-emulate. You can make something like Undertale by yourself, but making a more ambitious inside project like No Man's Sky? No way. And I seriously doubt NMS would have happened at all without Sony $$$ and publicity. With Kickstarter fading in recent years, most of these creators seem like they have to bootstrap their own funds. The Cuphead guys pretty much bet their entire families net worth on the game, mortgaged their homes etc. And that was for a $20.00 2d platformer. I know if I were an institutional investor there is little way I'd ever invest in some indie startup, the failure rate is way too high. And if I did, the terms I'd have to ask for are ones the majority of indies would understandably reject.

And I think it's telling NMS provoked such a negative reaction from players. Now granted the biggest issue was that the Devs basically outright lied about the nature of the game (which is why I never bought it), but I think an underappreciated part of the backlash was also about the 60 dollar pricepoint. Especially from gamers who are a bit casual players than your hardcore enthusiast like us. Like it or not, indie devs are forced into this pricing tier by gamers who demand basically lower and lower prices (when you consider today's 15 dollars is worth is equivalent to basically $15.45 in next year's money every year). There's too much product on the market thanks to Steam etc not curating and gamers are getting more and more used to some games being free altogether thanks to mobile. One thing I found really interesting about the Broken Age Documentary (a very compelling watch if you haven't seen it) was that Tim Schafer felt forced to pick the 20 dollar price point because any higher would severely negatively impact the game's anticipated metacritic rating according to test reviews. And that was in 2013. That's pretty insane when you consider his other adventure games were 60 bucks in the 90's (~$90-100 bucks in today's money) and basically no one balked at that price. I'm sure that issue may be even worse today. So there are some very real market realities that force indie devs to stay in this lane atm.

As much as I think game companies often don't treat gamers well, I also think it's true that the typical gamer often has wildly unrealistic expectations of how much a game costs to make.

anyway yeah I'm with you, I'd love to see more midtier $40.00 games but I don't think there's an easy way to make those anymore. Not without some structural changes to the industry.

Yeah I have no plans to ever play OG MGS, so don't worry. TBH I don't know if I even could stomach the visuals now. I didn't like Ps1 graphics at the time for the most part, but they were tolerable because they were novel thing in 1998. Now they are just old and low poly imo for the most part (some PS1 games' look hold up really well, most are ehhhhh....).

I didn't notice any oddities in the VA, if anything it seemed down to earth after MGS2. And there are worse than things in the world than a game being too easy, especially one that has as much narrative as the MGS games can. If it had less Kojima, that probably was a plus in my book. The guy is a great auteur but he really needs an editor at times. But yeah all that makes sense why a devoted fan would be upset.

Sounds like you get what makes FF great or has in the past anyway. It's a series that historically has always been about pushing the envelope graphically and narratively (though Square may not have the $$$ and skill to do it anymore like they used to). Dragon Quest is the tradition bound classic, FF is the experimental new hotness. In its heyday I think it was far better than the competition or anything console gamers had seen before. Today a lot of other series eclipse it in those regards. Just something to keep in mind if you play FFvi. They weren't really trying to make an alltime masterpiece, but rather something cutting edge comparatively. That's why personally I'd rather see a FFXVI than a FFVii remake, but business is business.

Yeah X-2 is interesting watershed moment for the series, To me it felt like the hard end of the golden era (or really X was the end and X-2 was the beginning of something new) for the FF series as the way those games were made after that was never the same. The FFVii expanded universe stuff, oddles of tie in games, the really long gaps between main entries, I think if the Enix merger never happened the series would not have gone that route. It definitely would have changed as Sakaguchi had grown bored of it though. Hard to say

@slag:

Do you think OoT is worth playing today? That might be a dumb question but it is an N64 game. I have very little experience with the LoZ series. The only one I've beaten is Wind Waker. I own TP and Skyward Sword and I've started TP couple times but always felt weird playing it having not played through OoT so both times I dropped it.

I know what I want is a big ask. I don't expect indie developers to put there lives on the line for every game they make like most of them seem to with their first outings. I do think there is room there for growth and hope the upper tier indie studios will eventually occupy that space. Games like The Witness or Hellblade seem to do well in that $30-40 range and those exist outside of the established indie scope. Digital games have come a long way, you know? They went from the $5-10 games to the $10-15 games to now the mostly $15-20 games. So I think as we move further and further away from retail and big gaming becomes more and more service, there is a void there that needs filling.

Ppl aren't used to variable pricing, especially in the US so that is a reality that makes it tough for developers to play with how much they charge. Still though, I think there's never been a better time to introduce different price points because aggressive micros-transactions have gotten ppl thinking about the cost of games and how much they’re paying for them. So the way I see it, if developers offer various flat rates, more than ever, it can seem attractive.

NMS is probably at the other end of the spectrum of The Witness or Hellblade. We're both pointing at the extremes. Hello Games and Sony did a lot of things wrong. Who knows how much the game ended up costing but the $60 price point seemed opportunistic. It’s hard to say how it would’ve done critically or commercially priced lower. The conversation is certainly different with a $40 game vs a $60 one. Regardless, NMS seemed like a mess on many levels, there is a lot to dissect there, and there are a lot of lessons to be learned but I hope one of them isn’t “we can’t charge more than $15-20.”

As for F2P games, I think games all fight for the same dollars but I don’t think there’s really any competition there. If you’re a person happy with playing that free game, maybe dropping a few dollars here and there, you’re that person. It’s not really a fight, it’s a lost cause. But also, there different games, different business models, different expectations. If you’re more casual, more than likely you’re kinda playing what’s being fed to you or you know exactly what you want to play. I think the kinds of games were talking about are more targeted, the audience more savvy, more aware. Then there is something like PUBG, a phenomenon, in that $20-30 range. How does that shift the perspection of pricing?

lol At the end of day, I’m just playing armchair analyst cause it’s fun. I don’t really look up numbers, I just go by how the current temperature feels to me. I’m always surprised by what ppl are comfortable and willing to pay. DLCs often seem way overpriced to me but ppl seem to buy it. On the other hand, I do see outrage over those midtier prices sometimes so it does seem very tricky and risky.

As for re-recorded voices for MGS, it does feel small but because it was a game ppl played over and over again and those tiny differences were very consistent throughout the remake, the effect of did add up over the course of the game. As for difficulty, I guess that depends on what you want out of the game but MGS fans generally like the stealth aspect of the gameplay so it seemed like no thought was put into the game in that area.

I think I can get over the visuals (I look at them more like an impressionistic painting rather something more realistic or detailed) but the feel of the action games of the era is too clunky for me. That’s why all the games I want to go back and check out are pretty much all turn-based JRPGs.

Even though they don’t seem to have the vision to put it all together, I still find the more recent FF games really interesting so I’m glad to spend time with them. FF7 remake however, I just think is a bad idea, especially the episodic approach they are taking. I’d much rather see a FF16 as well.

You still think FF6 holds up today though, right? What makes it a time and place game for you? You were the right age when it came out? Which JRPG games really impress you or do it for you these days? Because I only play like 1 or 2 a year, I’ve actually not dipped my toes in to many. It’s actually a pretty hard genre to be super knowledgeable in.

@liquiddragon:

Super long reply, sorry in advance. :)

re: OoT- Probably. the general gameplay structure is well done, It was absolutely foundational in series tropes/geography/mechanics etc, most of the dungeons are pretty good and the art style makes the low poly count more timeless than most ps1/n64 games.

I've heard good things about the 3Ds remake/remaster and that's probably the best way to experience it right now. I don't think it probably holds up as well as Mario 64, partly because later Zeldas improved the control scheme whereas 3D marios have rarely returned to the same same structure as 64. Not to mention Mario 64 really nailed it in the first try. Last time I replayed OoT was 2004-ish (played that GC version that had the Master Quest with it)? I still really liked it then even after playing Wind Waker.

So yeah, I'm going to say it's probably still worth checking out. Chances are it may not feel like a 10/10 to a new player today, but I bet you'll be able to appreciate why it was. Especially if you've played other 1997-1999 ish games.

re: mid tier AA games- Just me spitballing here as an armchair qb myself too . :) That's true, they have come a long way but if you look at both your examples they had pretty unusual funding situations as well. Witness was self financed by Johnathan Blow's proceeds from Braid when it was comparatively easy for indie devs to get rich and Hellblade was produced a by dev that formerly did AAA games for Capcom etc. There aren't many indie devs out there who have the benefit of those kinds of resources without major strings attached, especially first timers.

The issue with NMS being 60 bucks is that it changed the standards it was being compared. If an indie game doesn't deliver what it promises and it's 10-20 bucks, I think people are significantly less angry than if a game charging big boy money undelivers. It's just too bad NMS wasn't amazing like people hoped, it could have helped disabuse some bad ideas if it was loved.

I should clarify, that I personally agree with you that drawing the conclusion that the 15-20 pricepoint is the only place for indies is the wrong conclusion to draw from NMS's reception, but I've also dealt a with a decent number of financial types before in different industries. And I know that sort of wrong conclusion (that 60 dollars isn't viable for indies) is the sort of conclusion many of them will draw, because what they'll do is look at sales performance figures and just look at trends. They'll never ask why the trend is the trend, they'll just look at an see indie games struggling at 60 dollars without bothering to ask themselves if the underlying product was actually the problem. It's the same sort of weak thought process that leads nearly every western AAA game to have a 30ish scruffy white dude as the MC. And the reality is, when you need somebody else's money to make a product, you've got to convince them to give it to you. And if the people who have the money you need to borrow are wedded to bad ideas driven by a lazy interpretation of data, you gotta tailor your project to their bad ideas or you don't get funded.

So yeah it definitely can be done , I just think there's enough difficulty in actually delivering a game in that range that a studio has to ask themselves if they aren't just better off going lower or higher in most cases. After if you are going to have the headaches and complexity of a larger game, you might as well get the proceeds a game of that size could get. i.e. My perception is that the nature of the complexity jump going from 40 to 60 pricepoint is a much much smaller jump than going 20 to 40, because of the issue of having to get exterior funding is the same in either case. So the risk/reward calculation probably tells you to go to $60.00 if you gotta get banker/s investors involved to make the game happen would be my guess. Unless! You've got DLC or lootboxes like PUBG.

I could very well be very wrong about all of this, but that's how it looks to me. fwiw I'd rather you be right on this and I be wrong. :)

re: f2p- I don't know how many kids and teens you interact with, but I absolutely think it's in more direct competition than people realize based on observations I've made and things I hear from friends who are high school teachers etc. It's not so much about money as it is about time. Today's kids are not growing up with controllers and they aren't watching TV nearly as much as our generation. They still like consoles, but not nearly as much as we did. Touchscreen devices are their native environment and it gets first priority for them as an entertainment venue. So our generation and maybe gamers today 19+, totally fine with 40 bucks. But today and tomorrow's teens? That's probably a harder and harder sell all the time as their core environment is free stuff. And even more critically f2p on a device that's viewed as essential to their lives.

I think your point about PUBG (and even Overwatch on PC which has a $40.00 version) is actually an acknowledgement of that. As console games move more towards to a freemium DLC model in part to make themselves more competitive with f2p stuff. Younger gamers seem much more tolerant of lootbox/gachapon systems than 20/30 somethings.

I think it's also worth noting that f2p Fortnite Battle Royale seems to have eclipsed PUBG in the last month in the West and I don't anticipate PUBG ever winning that battle ever again.

I think if gamers were truly willing to pay more for games, AAA games would ~$89.99 ish by now (and consequently indies $30-60 bucks). That's probably where they need to be at a minimum to have the same revenue as a pay up front model like the Ps2 era if they were to give up all DLC.

re: MGS- Oh really? Hunh, I was probably too new to the series to notice the stealth didn't work properly. Maybe I just thought I was really good at it. haha

yeah that's a great point about how games from that era played. Control schemes were still experimental in that era. I'm not real crazy about going back to tank controls etc. .e.g. I tried to play Megaman Legends last year and ugh, just did not like how that handles at all.

Well you more than convinced me, I won't play MGS1 on PS1 :)

Re: Ff6- I honestly don't know if it holds up for some who is new to the game. I feel much more confident in saying Zelda: OoT and Mario 64 do than FF6. And it isn't because FF6 is bad, I just think SNES style JRPG as form altogether is probably a hard sell for new to the genre gamer today. Whereas 3d Platformers and definitely 3d ARPGs are still very much en vogue.

Fwiw I'm playing I am Setsuna atm, and it isn't clicking with me like I thought it would, even though it leans heavily on game design from that era. Felt the same way with Cosmic Star Heroine. While both borrow a lot more from Chrono Trigger than FF6, I find myself wishing they had voice acting, a pulled in camera so I can see characters interacting and more developed narratives. But in all honesty I don't think most SNES games had any more of those wants of mine than these two games do and these games are more than ok at doing what they intend to do.

Tbh there aren't many traditional JRPGs that really grab me much lately. I'll still play any of the big 3 franchises that come out (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and these days I guess you gotta say Persona), but that's about it. Suikoden, Arc the Lad,Grandia are all dead, Breath of Fire wishes it were dead and Tales and Xeno I always found mediocre. I'm chewing on Bravely Default on my 3ds when I play handheld stuff (which I like a ton so far) but haven't gotten to the infamous backhalf of the game yet. I really think a big part of it is that those games are massive time sinks, a lot of their stories are clearly aimed at 10-5 year old kids, and you can get a lot of those narrative itches scratched in more Action oriented AAA games these days. It's kinda weird to even think this, But a game like Uncharted, Yakuza 0 or Tomb raider will actually scratch the narrative itch for me better than some JRPGs in recent years. Ni No Kuni II could be a really interesting test of the current markets' appetite for these kinds of games. I keep telling myself I need to get back on the JRPG train as it used to be my favorite genre, but I never seem to actually do it. ha!

as far as time and place go with FF6. Yeah I was the right age and it also critically helped that FF6 was the very first thing I ever saw on my parent's brand new TV (the first new one my parents got since before I was born). That new Tv wasn't big by today's standards but it was much bigger than the one we had before and a very impressive sound system compared to what I was used to.

But I also think that games with stories as good as FF6's were still really rare back then so it really stood out in comparison to what had come out previously and what had came out at the same time (kinda like Babe Ruth in baseball, his achievements have since been eclipsed, but what hasn't been eclipsed is the degree to which he was better than his contemporaries). These days even 2d platformers have narratives in them. So there's a cutting edge/etch showpiece aspect to my love for it, that probably is no longer noticeable today.

Ff6 also apparently was a game that was kinda thrown together quickly by that era's standards, so I don't think Squaresoft internally or japanese fans view it with quite the same reverence many American gamers do. But it'll always be very special to me.

So really I don't know, maybe I'm being far too negative about it. I'll be pretty curious to see what you think whenever you get around to it. Just don't play the Steam or iOS versions if you can help it. What they did to the sprites of the game should be a crime.

have you played other 16 bit JRPGs? I guess the way I'd put it is, if you like 16 bit JRPGs, you'll love this game. But if you don't like the genre or don't know if you do, hard to say.

@slag:

Sorry again for the late reply. I'm such a slow writer, I been meaning to write back but I kept putting it off. You're so articulate, I was also kinda dreading embarrassing myself.

About FF6 and OoT:

hmm, surprised to hear you think OoT might hold up better than FF6. It seems like ppl often talk about how SNES era games are way more playable than PS1/N64, early polygonal stuff these days. Add to that, based on how frequently OoT is cited as one of the bedrocks of 3D action games, I was expecting you to warn me of it. FF6 on the other hand, my impression was that ppl think of it as a timeless classic, at least as you mentioned, in the West.

I definitely need to play both, but I think I've gonna play FF6 relatively soon. I've put it off for too long.

I actually don't have any 16bit JRPG experience. I jumped from Game Boy JRPGs like Pokemon and other Pokemon knockoffs like Medarot and Monster Race as well as Dragon Quest 1 and 2 to PS2 JRPGs.

Regarding the video game market/business:

Well, you make a compelling argument and a lot of sense, especially when we look at it from the perspective of the younger audience and what they're use to. I guess the one thing I'm not clear on is why Johnathon Blow would've made so much more money with Braid than successful indies now. Were the terms really that much better? The markets so much more mature now, the audience bigger, and every platform seems viable, plus Braid came out for $10.

How do you see the trajectory of the freemium/f2p/games as service market? The way I see it or at least want to look at it, it's only going get tougher to complete in that arena. I see it very much turning into and solidifying as the “comfort food” games market where very dominate games rule the space and make it an absolutely nightmare for newcomers because unlike traditional games, it’s all about keeping the players to that particular product. So it seems to me, eventually, if it isn’t already, that portion of the industry will be the riskiest territory to even think about stepping into. And if that’s the case, isn’t it logical to think most developers will revert to a more traditional model (with dlcs and such of course.)

I also still think not all games are conducive to certain trendy business models so I guess I’m optimistic that the industry will not just go towards the one obvious direction but many different directions.

We do see some $30-40 games from indie developers and we’ve been seeing some $40 games from corporate studios the past year or so, so it does seem like an arena ppl are curious about and thinking about at the very least.

My whole desire to see games at that price point just comes from the fact that I just can’t seem to get excited about a lot of indie games these days. I know games like Celeste or Iconoclasts are suppose to be good and I’m sure they are but I can’t muster an interest in them.

I really like to see more high rez, PS1/N64 inspired games than the NES/SNES era that's been mined to death. I wasn't totally blown away by Grow Home but it seemed inspired and visually, doable for small studios.

About other JRPGS:

lol at “Breath of Fire wishes it were dead.” Has it just been limping for awhile?

If I were to play just one game each out of those series named, Suikoden, Arc the Lad, Grandia, Breath of Fire, and throw Wild Arms in there, which ones would you recommend?

What would be your top ten JRPG excluding FF and DQ? Does that list change drastically if you exclude Square and DQ?

@liquiddragon:It's all good man, I do the same because I'm trying to give you good answers to your questions to the best of my ability. I know I'm a real wordy guy. :)

Don't stress over it though, I'm not going to judge you man. Take as much time as you need to and don't feel like you have to respond if it gets to be too much. Just having fun banter is the way I view it.

RE:FF6- I wasn't expecting to recommend LoZ:OoT myself, but as I thought about your questions the more I started to feel that maybe gameplay mechanics in 16bit JRPG probably would feel alien and obsolete to many modern gamers. I definitely think 16bit games in general have aged better (like say MegaMan X or Super Metroid) than Gen 5 stuff (like Goldeneye) for the most part. But I think perhaps the gameplay in Zelda: OoT is actually pretty similar to stuff that's still really popular today.

Whereas JRPGs have kinda become a niche genre, and even in that genre turn based menu combat driven ones are even more rare. And then when you consider one of the main selling points of these games were the narrative, which frankly games as a whole do better than they did in that era. Maybe it doesn't seem as amazing then. I dunno, I'm probably overthinking it.

So I guess I'm just wondering if the genre itself hasn't aged as well as say ARPGs or Platformers etc regardless of generation.

Given your Pokemon and especially Dq background, you probably are fine playing FF6, but I bet a lot of folks just wouldn't have the patience for one today.

RE: Jon Blow and the bizness of making games- Going to get rambly! sorry in advance! I enjoy thinking about this kind of stuff. I promise this is the last mega answer (if for no other reason than this is probably the extent of what I can piece together about indie game biz)

It's Supply and Demand basically. He and other indie devs who got games out before 2012 had significantly less competitors so they basically didn't have to spend any money on advertising because Xbox/PSN/Steam would essentially market the games for them for free. Frankly even people who made pretty unimpressive games seemed to strike it rich for a awhile. And it really did seem a mini Gold rush. It wasn't that hard to have your 2D retro platformer seem unique and fresh just by virtue there weren't many others being made readily available. It still had to be good, but if it was good people noticed. There was even a period where seemed like getting a quicklook from Gb was enough to make people good money. I specifically remember the Q.U.B.E. devs saying their sales jumped a ton after Gb covered the game.

But then the Indie Flood happened and now there are several thousand new games on Steam every year (really good run down here from one of the beneficiaries of the old way http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-indie-bubble-is-popping.html ). PSN and XBL followed suit and dropped quality standards and frankly aren't a whole better. It's like everybody decided to become the Wii Shop (remember when the Bombcast used to mock all the shovelware trash in their Nintendo Download express segment? Well the whole gaming world is that now). That's horrible news for an aspiring indie, because if you aren't featured on that front page you games sales potential falls probably around ~90%.

Frankly there's more games than there are players and the problem gets worse every week. Steam has done no one any favors by not curating their marketplace. Gamers can't find games (too much choice causes paralysis by analysis and people don't explore the store anymore) and devs can't find customers. I first really started thinking about this problem when I noticed pretty good games start to fail commercially (like friend of the bombcast Samantha Kalman's Sentris). And I also noticed that even very accomplished indie devs like SuperGiant are having significantly lesser and lesser sales with each new game they put out, despite no perceivable meaningful drop in quality of product.

E.g. Check this out (numbers pulled from SteamSpy)

Say what you will about Pyre, I don't think Bastion is 10 times better a game than it.

I've seen this trend in others I've checked out too like Zeboyd Games. It seems to be a pretty widespread trend. Heck I'd even argue this affected Bethesda last fall. Wolf 2/Evil Within 2/Prey and Dishonored:Outsider all suffered similar huge drops compared to previous entries. (Not to mention Bethesda's whole withholding review copies from Game Journos policy probably backfired bigtime as it probably limited their games' exposure)

Now Pyre's numbers will improve some over the next year, But it's not going to sell a million more copies on Steam. It's probably pushed at least half of what it will sell lifetime by now on Steam, more realistically 85%+. I'm guessing SG probably sold enough copies combined on all the platforms combined to be ok for another game, but geez I dunno. At one point I know most indie devs got something like 70% of their sales on Steam vs PSN/XBL/eShop, though that seems to shift every couple years as to which platform is the most lucrative.

In fact I don't think it's any accident that so many indie devs are seemingly making their real money on Switch right now. It's simply because that store hasn't been flooded yet and gamers there are hungry for things to play. So the Switch is where to make your indie money in 2018. By 2019 though it might be flooded too.

So what this all means is indies now to have spend a lot of money on marketing to make back their development investment, especially if they have any meaningful dev costs. That's horrible news for them as ad spend can run ~60% of a AAA's game total budget (I believe that's what Witcher 3 spent). Not even joking.

Unless you are somebody like the Cuphead guys, who entered into a relationship with a platformer holder who helps push your product for free or Undertale which just happened to luck into Zeitgeist/meme of the moment virality, your production costs probably just probably doubled by having to advertise. And it's not like it's an optional expense, because if you don't market you literally might only sell a couple thousand copies. (Let's not even talk about how difficult it is to even know how to advertise and whether it's even working correctly in this day and ager)

So when you apply this reality to making a Ps1 era style game, You've got significantly higher costs and thus risk than making a 2d sprite game.

Don't have real numbers for any of this, so this speculation here may be completely off base. But I would hazard a guess your dev costs are probably at least 4x times higher on a Ps1 style game due to how many more man hours it takes whether that's paying yourself solo or others to get it done quicker (not even including higher rent to house the larger staff as you probably can't do house a staff in somebody's house and having to spend time managing people etc etc) and then that budget is doubled again by having to advertise. So making your own Metal gear Solid knockoff today might cost you 10x what it cost Phil Fish to make Fez in 2012. That's not the kind of money most people can self finance. That's a lot riskier bar to have to clear to break even.

With this in mind to retread a little bit of my earlier answer to you

So assuming you need outside money to make this PS1-esque game happen, the financiers will look at their own internal data (however good or bad that might be) and try to assess what the optimal price point for the game might be. A game at $40.00 has to sell 50% more copies than the same game at $60.00 to make the $40.00 pricepoint be as profitable. Will it do that? I honestly have no idea. They probably don't either because there aren't many games period that try. But I bet they think more money is easier to get than it is get more players. (most marketing studies I've read suggest getting additional money from existing customers is easier and a lot cheaper than getting new customers in general).

So not saying it can't be done ( Subnautica's recent success is point definitely in your favor that there is a market to be had in the 20-40 price range) but I do think it's a big leap from 16bit to Polygonal, not an incremental next step forward in cost and complexity like 8bit to 16bit.

Frankly this would be a pretty fun problem to try to solve if I worked in the games business.

But yeah as a gamer, I want what you are talking about to happen just like you do. I'd like to see indies advance some in complexity and I'm ready to pay more for it. This is what needs to happen if single player games are going to survive. It'll be interesting to see how Dean Dodrill's Never Stop Sneakin' does when it comes out as that's one of the few guys I see trying a Ps1 vibe (heck his is even a pretty deliberate parody of MGS1). But again he already had a massive hit in Dust: An Elysian Tail, so I imagine he could self finance it like Jonathan Blow did with Witness.

fwiw I think the issue you have lack of motivation with playing some retro indies like iconoclasts (which I share) may be partially due to the indie flood problem. These games no longer seem special when there's dozens every week. It's overwhelming frankly.

btw A good buddy of mine just finished Celeste and says it's better than Super Meat Boy, if you like those kinds of hard as nails precision platformers.

RE: Mtx future-

So I read EA's and Activision's earnings and it looks like that already Mtx are ~50% of all of their sales. Big jump in that area this past year, growing fast. :( Safe To say the war is already lost for people like myself who want to pay up front for the whole game. It's only a matter of time before Square/Nintendo/Tecmo etc follow suit in earnest. Capcom's already well down the path with SFV. They are just leaving too much money on the table if they don't do it too.

And what's even worse is it looks like Mtx are significantly more profitable than selling the base game, which is not a surprise. If for no other reason that their ad spend on Mtx is basically zero, just throw a splash screen in-game, some social media posts and do some e-mail blasts to registered users (everybody wants you to have account these days) and they are gtg. Existing customers already pay attention to what you say, so you don't have to buy Youtube Ads etc to get them to listen. So it's basically pure profit. So you can be sure Wall Street shareholders are going to push mgt of public companies to go deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole.

I agree with you that the market can only bear so many of these GaaS titles at once. But I think it can basically support what I call the Coke/Pepsi model in most genres, in that you can have 2-3 different ones (e.g. LoL/DOTA2/HotS for PC MOBAs, Fortnite/PUBG for Battle Royale shooters, maybe Destiny/Anthem for loot shooters, WoW/SW:tOR in MMORPGs, etc patterns like that). I don't think it's an issue of $ for gamers but simply hours in the day. There's only so many lifestyle games you can play at once and only so many players. But overall it means a lot less titles and maybe fewer publishers. Instead of getting 2-3 titles in a series in a generation, maybe you just get one per.

RE: JRPGs-

Heh, my list probably doesn't even really exist if you exclude Square and Enix, I actually have a rough draft for a "ranking of my top 100 JRPGs" that I was going to do after getting inspired by GB's farcical RanKING of Fighters series. But I didn't publish it out of embarrassment. I realized pretty quickly that a genre I feel pretty knowledgeable about, is actually one where I have a lot more depth of knowledge in a handful of franchises than breadth of knowledge in the whole genre.

So according to my rough draft (taking out Square and Enix) as of right now

1. Persona 4 (total rank 3)
2. Valkyria Chronicles (10)
3. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE (11)
4. Shadow Hearts: Covenant (12)
5. Persona 3 (13)
6. Suikoden III (17)
7. Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter (20)
8. Tales of Symphonia (23)
9. Mario & Luigi: SuperStar Saga (24)
10. Undertale (25)

And 3 of those are basically Persona games. Good chance Persona 5 would be in there when i get around to starting that. Yeeesh, I need more variety in my resume. There's still some very key franchises I haven't experienced enough that i really need to before feeling like this list can be locked down (like Valkyrie Profile).

Kinda funny all of those are post 2000 games too, hunh. Guess I was just totally all in on Square in the SNES/Ps1 days

I know you asked for series specific recommendations, but some of those franchises I don't feel super confident about saying play this or that due to my gaps of knowledge in some of the entries.

• BoF- I've played and liked the ones most people don't (1,2 and 5), I haven't really played the ones everybody loves (3&4). 2 is interesting in that it's one of the first games I can recall that has an NPC town building minigame,That was pretty novel at the time. 5 Has a mechanic that your main character has a non-replenishable superpower that if he exhausts it's game over. So it's a game in a way where you get weaker as you go along in a sense and rewards conservation of resources. People I think were upset that it wasn't a power fantasy like 99% of JRPGs out there.
• Wild Arms- I've only played 3. I liked it just fine sits at 50 on my list
• Grandia I've only played a little of the series and I played the "bad one", decent middle of the pack type games. Doesn't stand out atm
• Arc the Lad- haven't actually played the core trilogy. I did really like AtL:Twilight of the Spirits. Surprisingly interesting allegory on racism.

I will say if you can handle Ps2 graphics I think Shadow Hearts: Covenant is a hugely underrated game, it does directly tie into events from the previous game but I played them out of order and thought it worked perfectly fine in a really organic way. You got a new basically Point of View character who doesn't know what the SC1 protag went through a year earlier, which was a pretty decent narrative device to handle it I think. I also think Suikoden 1-3 are really great. 1&2 are best played as 1 game as the save carries over. Also Suikoden 1 is super short. Just don't play 4. or Suikoden tactics

So if you put me on the spot, I'd probably say the early Suikoden games. You can get them on PSn for PS3. Shadow hearts is probably hard/expensive/inconvenient to find these days.

Breath of Fire was banished to iOS for BoF Vi where even Japanese hardcore fans hated it. It had been dormant since the Ps2 era after BofV (which I absolutely loved, but it was reviled by a lot of series traditonalists) I guess they pulled the plug on it last year. So my guess is the series is dead permanently now :(

heh sorry if I overdid it again. Hope you don't mind, I like talking about games with nice people. :)

@slag: haha, cool, thanks. I think I just need to write more on a daily basis cause man am I slow at it. It takes me forever.

Re: FF6

I think I'll be okay? I just have to remind myself not to compare it too much to other FF games I've played. I recently played through Persona 4 and I feel like I kinda took a lot of the fun out of it cause I couldn't stop comparing it to Persona 3. I don't remember having this issue when I've played FF games in the past so I don't think I'll have it with FF6 but P4 is so fundamentally similar to P3, I couldn't help comparing the two.

Re: Business of games

Yeah, XBLA Summer of Arcade and to a lesser extent, PSN Spring Fever, use to be almost like events. No sane person can keep up with today's output.

Those SuperGiant number are fucking brutal. Ouch. I feel bad for Samantha Kalman too. I did want to try out Sentries but it did seem like a niche game in a niche genre. It even seemed hard to show off.

With AAA games, for the longest time companies could afford to have a production arms race. How good games look today is proof of that but with indie games, like you said, budgets are so constrained, were not seeing competitiveness in the same way and were mostly stuck with games inspired by a specific console era so I guess it's just natural to be bored by them.

Re: Other JRPGs

Thanks for the JRPG run down. Man, I really want to get my hands on Shadow Hearts: Covenant but I don't want to buy a used copy for $40... That's one of those games I remembering seeing at Best Buy or where ever so many times but didn't know any better. I must've walked passed it like a 100 times. I guess the US rights are with a company that's not even in games anymore so a chance of a re-release isn't looking great.

For now, I'm gonna get through FF6 then Idk. That game's been on my mind lately so I think it's a good time to commit to it. I'm pretty excited.

Any opinions on Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, and Suikoden 2 (on it's own.) I'm thinking my next JRPG after FF6 might be one of those cause I've had 'em for a long time and ppl seem to like them. I know you suggested play Sukoden 1 and 2 together but S2 is the one I own so do you think reading a summary of S1 is okay?

Lastly, I appreciate the long posts. I just feel bad cause I can't volley back at the same level. haha

@liquiddragon: It definitely takes a me awhile too. I do a lot of re-writes because I'll have new thoughts I'll try to slot in somewhere earlier for readability.

re:FF6- I think that's a very fair way to feel about P4. It's a mechanical refinement to 3 not a dramatic overhaul, with a new tone and cast. I prefer 3's narrative myself, because I prefer gravitas in long games. Jokes are great, not sure I want 90 hours of jokes. I like jokes and silly stuff, just not all the time. One place where I differ with the Gb staff is I actually appreciate it when a game takes itself seriously. I go back and forth with myself whether 3 or 4 is better of the two and I usually say 4 because I think Tartarus isn't great and you can control your whole party in 4 (well I guess you can in P3P as well, but I consider P3 FES to be the most definitive P3 version). So I get where you are coming from.

Also FF never has caused that issue for you, because unlike just about every JRPG series out there FF is about radical reinvention with each new entry. While FF games all have similarities, no two are alike.

And hey if you have your heart set on playing FF6, and it sounds like you do, you might as well see for yourself. What's the worst that could happen? you get bored and don't like it? A lot worse things in life than that. :)

Anyway, definitely looking forward to hearing your thoughts about FF6 whenever you play it. I hope you have fun with it!

re:Bizness- yeah Kalman's game was pretty niche, so perhaps not the best example. Still it struck me as something that would have made money in 2011/2. Seemed like everything did back then.

But it is pretty astounding to see the sales unit drops pretty much across the board from people who have had a lot of hits like SG.

thinking more about the mid tier indie problem. I guess what's needed to solve this is more indie publishers like Devolver Digital. A friendly source of money that understands games but isn't so corporate that they have to be beholden to their own investors to maximize every ounce of profits.

JRPGs- Oof that sucks, I didn't know that happened to the SH series. I just remember it going out with a whimper in the next entry that few liked. Damn shame.

Without a doubt, my single least favorite aspect of the Ps4 right now is how little it uses the old PS system backcatalogs. It just feels wrong to me that there aren't easy affordable ways to play games like SH:C or Valkyrie Profile. We as gamers lose and Sony loses a lot of potential sales.

I like all 3 of the games you mention a lot.

• Vagrant Story- I really really liked this game, it's my favorite of the three. Maybe not as much as that guy on these forums here who always tells everyone that it is the best game ever made, but yeah this is pretty much the definition of a cult classic. Little bizarre and under explained in some areas, but I think the combat system is fantastic and I absolutely love the art style.
• Parasite Eve- I liked this one a lot too. Didn't like the second game that much. I honestly thought for a while PE was going to be a massive franchise and Square must have too. I know at one point they even had a US Movie adaption in the works with Madonna to play Aya Brea. It's such an odd fusion of genres and tropes (tactical combat, guns, Resident Evil Bio Horror and police procedural mystery). Definitely worth checking out. It's pretty short too. In your shoes I'd probably play this one after FF6, just because it's so different from FF6 and short. Easy one to check off the list.
• Suikoden II- It's not the end of the world playing alone by any means, as it's a great game in its' own right but if you ever plan to play 1, I'd wait. Fwiw I would not say that with 95%+ of other games. There's some stuff carries over from game to the next story and character wise if you have a Suikoden 1 save file with all 108 stars. Whether or not you care, probably depends on how much of a completionist you are, it's not going to alter the story fundamentally if you don't do it. But there are a few small things you literally can't experience in 2 without a save file from 1. If you have a Ps3/Vita/PSp I think you can get both digitally for the combined total of $15.98 now ($5.99 for Suikoden 1, $9.99 for Suikoden II). So it really isn't prohibitively expensive to get both, assuming you have one of those 3 systems that can play it. And II's save file (with save data from I on it) can actually carry over into Suikoden III but I don't think the benefits there are as meaningful. Still pretty crazy that you could carry over data across not just 1 but 2 games! But if you got one of those crazy expensive rare physical copies of Suikoden II , I don't blame you for actually wanting to make sure you play what you bought. You'll have fun with it regardless of however you decide to play it I think.

Naw you're good man, you are a much more efficient communicator than I am. :)

@slag:

re: P3&4 - I'm firmly in the P3 camp. I appreciate it when games take themselves seriously too and it's definitely the kinda stuff I gravitate towards. P3 resonated more with me, especially tonally and narratively. P3FES is the one I played so that’s the one know. I was pretty obsessed with it and even bought P3P during the middle of my playthrough of it. P3P seems ok but from the little I played, much of the presentation had to be cut out, which is pretty disappointing. Someday I want to playthrough it as a girl to see how that is but it definitely seems like a game for someone that’s already played P3.

The dungeons in P4, when it comes down to it, were better but they weren't enough of an improvement. At the end of the day, the dungeons in both games are kinda of a slog and offering what amounts to a handful of tilesets doesn't solve that. I found some satisfaction in climbing Tartarus, seeing the floor number go up, hearing the variations in the Tararus theme, feeling the progression.

The combat too, I was excited about having control over my whole party and it's absolutely a lifesaver during boss battles but man, does it slow down the pace of the combat and extend the time you spend in the dungeons. Thinking about it now, I should've given up control in a large portion of the game.

Also, looking at P4 through the prism of 2018, it was shockingly out of touch about LGBTQ themes. As an Asian, I get how behind we are on social issues so I wasn’t exactly surprised but it still felt poorly handled by any standard. When did you play it and how did that stuff come off to you? I'm trying to think how it would've came off in 2008 when it was released in the US. It's hard to see cultural shifts in attitudes when you’re in it, they seem subtle but I guess we've come a long way from even a decade ago.

The other major gripe I had with P4 was the repetitiveness of the script. It's not the fact that they all go through the same arc of "accepting the shadow self" I have an issue with but that they repeat the same lines of dialogue and scenes over and over again.

That said, I tend to, good or bad, put the 1st game I play in a series (if I like it) on a pedestal so I might be unfairly harsh on P4. There was a lot to like in the game and I enjoyed it for sure but it was hard to see passed the formula sometimes, both from the previous game and the ones specific to P4.

re: the business - Devolver seems to put out a lot of good stuff and as far as I can tell, ppl like to work with them? Definitely like to see more publishers like them.

re: Other JRPGS - Sony was pretty good about it last gen. I picked up a lot of games I missed from the PS1/PS2 days including the games I asked you about. Valkyrie Profile is another series I’d love to get my hands on. Those PS1/PS2 Classics must not do that well, output on the PS4 has been poor to say the least. It’s sad the PS4 can’t even play PS1 games, PS1 back-compat has been so consistent on PS hardware.

Cool man, I’ll play PE first out of the 3. I thought Parasite Eve was twice the length based on HLTB. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone talk bad about Vagrant Story. haha

I didn’t know Suikoden games had save transfers before you mentioned it. I guess I’ve never looked that closely into the series. All I know is that ppl like Suikoden 2 and 3. I’ll have to think about picking up S1 when I get there. I kinda make a point to not get too crazy about playing things in order but if you think it’s worth it, I might have to. Save transfers are still pretty rare so it might be neat to do it.

@liquiddragon:

re: Persona- Naw man, I don't think any of what you said is unfair to P4 at all. Sounds to me like you could have played 4 first and you still would have preferred 3. None of what you described sounds like series fatigue that had its tropes' novelty wear off but rather actual structural deficiencies in the product from your point of view.

Speaking of that phenomenon, not to promote one of my own lists again (I only point these out sometimes because I find the subject fascinating and it's an easy way to discuss it), after I heard Brad throw out one of his untested axioms about "your first Mario kart always being your favorite" I decided to test myself to see if I actually like the first game I play in a franchise the best. Turns out, I usually don't.

https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/slag/lists/my-first-game-in-a-franchise-is-my-favorite-434-of/85383/

And I've kept updating it over the years anytime I've played a second game in a franchise. Right now the first game is my favorite approximately 43% of the time (give or take a few % due to faulty memory, changing feelings etc). And that result actually makes sense to me because Video games are a technologically progressive medium where sequels have the opportunity to offer gameplay that wasn't possible in previous entries.

The Trash Mob random Encounter issue in P4 didn't bother me with the additional turns, and I much preferred having the control over my Ai teammates instead of them letting me die in boss fights like in P3.

I get where you are coming from on the repetition of story beats and dialogue. I dunno I'm guessing I'm just used to that from Anime.

but it would have been nice if it had an auto-function like some of the Dragon Quest games do. I don't hate Random Encounters like a lot of people do, but I do think their implementation in too many JRPGs is pretty lazy. Be nice if devs find a way to make them more compelling.

Re: the Naoto and Kanji etc stuff- My first exposure to the Persona itself was the GB Endurance run back in the day. Then I went back and played P3 and P4. SMT games were getting big right when I started to disengage from JRPGs and I never really gave that series a chance.

Well I can't really go into this without touching on some hot button topics atm because I think it's very interrelated bso hopefully that's ok. Hopefully I don't say anything foolish here.

I definitely noticed it right away, part of that is probably due to me just growing up in a fairly diverse environment as well as going to a super liberal school. At some point years ago I realized I'd just have to look past those kinds of issues on occasion if I were going to be able to continue to enjoy a lot of Japanese media. There's some fanservicey stuff where I just can't and I usually don't play those games.. These kinds of tropes and stuff weren't as noticeable in the NES/SNES days for a variety of reasons, but once voice acting etc kicked in they became obvious. I had some friends who stopped playing japanese games over some of this stuff back in the day. I suppose it's easier for me to swallow because those kinds of issues don't affect me directly on a daily life personal level. I personally don't hold media created by a different culture to the same standards that I hold American games to and I don't feel like those tropes are coming from a malicious creative intent. Maybe that's not the best way to handle it or an accurate way to view these things I dunno.I don't really know anything about the Persona creative team or their values.

That being said, if someone asked me about the game that I knew to have similar values to me (or if I were a professional reviewer) I would definitely point these sorts of portrayals out as being potentially upsetting material present in the game. I usually don't bring it up to most people though on the internet, because I notice how angry some gamers get over any perceived criticism of the content of a game.

Frankly people have been upset by this stuff for decades upon decades. I really don't feel like there's been a cultural shift per say as much as a demographic and communications one. Many of my friends and acquaintances have complained loudly privately about these sorts of tropes and media portrayals, especially around race most of my life. I mean I've personally seen my friends get hassled by police due to their race for over 20 years ago (get pulled over randomly etc). So Ferguson etc was only notable to me in that the media actually covered it this time.

I think what's actually different now versus even 2008-2010 is that minority groups have a louder voice due to increased numbers thanks to social media and a willingness to use their voices. Before they just kinda had to roll with the punches. This sort of thing was never cool, it's just that a lot of LGBTQ folks didn't feel safe expressing their displeasure in mainstream spaces before. Now they do, and now they have a means to do it where it won't be ignored as easily. Which is partly why white conservatives are so angry these days, All these people that were basically invisible to them before are speaking up and conservatives don't like being challenge. Take for instance the latest Fox News vs Lebron James thing. The Fox News crowd are basically mad that Lebron has an opinion at all and doesn't just entertain them as a blank slate.

Same sort of thing with Anita Sarkeesian tbh. The stuff she critiqued video games about in 2012 is more or less Collegiate Feminism 101 type stuff. Nothing that radical and certainly well known cultural behaviors that the Advertising world has consciously exploited since the 50's at least. Not to mention commercialized media like Movies, Tv shows and books etc. I had heard most of her constructs easily a decade + before her video series ever ran. Whether you agree or disagree with her conclusions or her methodology, I don't think what she said is really any different than what a Women's Studies college professor would have said even in the early 1990's. But again most of white America just ignored those opinions and now they can't because of numbers. So they're defensive and feel attacked.

So yeah I definitely noticed how P4 handled LGBTQ characters right away when I saw it.

RE: JRPGS- It'd be interesting to see what sort of numbers Ps1 classics actually did. I do notice they seemingly never go on sale anymore . :(

I think Sony has had an unfortunate change in philosophy this gen with their back catalog. I think they'd rather find a way to get your to rebuy the same game over and over again than do right by their customers. I also know that licensing is a major issue for these guys for anything third party. So even if let's say Sony wanted VP on PSNow, they may have a contractual issue with Square depending on how the original contract was written. And Renegotiating rights may be too expensive to be worthwhile. I know that's tripped up a lot of games for PSTV compatibility.

But also since GaaS is so big now, they probably don't care that much about re-selling old standalone games since there's no mtx to be had there. :(

Yeah I'm trying to dance around spoilers re: Suikoden. Again I don't think you'll miss a ton if you just go straight into 2, but there are some definite tangible benefits to doing them in order. At least the first 2. Just want to make sure you have enough information about it to do whatever you feel is best for you.

@slag:

re: 1st Mario Kart - hmm, I didn't do any hard math but looking at this list and your list, I think that theory applies to me better, though I kinda cheated with some of them. Instead of "1st game I played", I counted the 1st game I spent real time with. Like I specifically remember going over to ppl's houses and trying out some 2D Mario games but 64 was the first one I really sat down and spent any meaningful time with. I feel like as a kid, if I went over to a friend's house, more often than not if it was a single player game, I'd be watching it being played and maybe at the most get a few cracks at it. So Idk where you'd land on that kind of scenario but I opted to count the first one I spent quality time with as the first. Multiplayer games like Super Smash I'd count the very 1st one I touched.

re: P4 - I'm also not one to get uppity about entertainment, especially foreign stuff, Anime or otherwise. I grew up on Anime so I know about the cheap jokes and tired tropes. I guess because I never got into much of the romance genre or anything adjacent to it that would deal squarely with LGBTQ themes, especially shows (movies a little), any gay/trans/crossdressing gag I usually come across are pretty quick throwaway stuff. P4 stood out to me because it seems to step in it and lean on it pretty heavy, to the point that I think, in it's own way, P4 is tackling these themes? Maybe this is a bit backwards on my part but I can get passed the cheap shots I see in many Japanese entertainment but if a game decides to deal with these kinds of topics, I have to critique how it's handled. And the way P4 navigates that stuff is flat out terrible even from just an entertainment perspective because it's the kinda tired lame jokes we're both familiar with, stretched out in the neighborhood of 20 hours (an estimate based on my played time of 111 hours.)

I haven't dug too deep into the P4 conversations from the site yet, I've avoided that part of the site cause I wanted to play it first. I'm just now getting to the P4 ER. I was just surprised such a huge portion of the game was so distasteful to the American eye because ppl seem to be so overwhelmingly in love with the game around these parts.

re: JRPGs and PS1

yeah man, at one point I scooped up Suikoden 2, Parasite Eve 1&2, and Vagrant Story during a sale for $3 a piece. Breath of Fire 4 and Wild Arms for a freaking $1. A little part of me doesn't want to pay full price for Suikoden 1 because of this.

I like Sony and Microsoft both better when they're in 2nd place. : / Whenever they're leading, they show their real corporate side. haha

Thanks for letting me know about the save transfers with Suikoden. I guess playing them both = playing 1 FF game or like 2/3 of a Persona so it's fairly reasonable.

@liquiddragon:

On an unrelated noted lifebar.io appears to have died. So good thing we talked about this before I lost all my progress. :( Doh Well I guess I gotta start over and hopefully I remember everything. Well shit, Not sure if I saved it or not. This is why I normally work in Excel first. haha.

Re: 1st is your fav etc-

Oh Interesting!

Some of our differences are probably a function me being a bit older than you are I'm guessing.

The watching it at your friend's house first issue wasn't really applicable to me for a couple reasons. When I did that, games were generally compact enough experiences (and many cases didn't even offer saves) that you could pretty much get a good idea of the the whole thing in a few minutes. Did I need to make it to Dr Wily's Castle to know if I liked Mega Man? Not really. Sure I would have been impressed if I did but it's not like it was a radically different experience when you did. Plus games were hard enough I didn't go in with the expectation to see the end, so I made value judgments all the time off short gameplay sessions. More or less how people viewed stuff in Arcades.

And because of that difficulty everybody died so often playing (because again Games were hard) that everybody there got lots of turns to play. Considering that if I still somehow didn't get enough time with it, I could usually scrape together enough chore and allowance money to go rent the game for a weekend.

Another thing is the first games I encountered were very often rudimentary entries in many franchises, so I feel gaming as whole just got so much better by even the SNES era that there are very very few franchises that I think peaked before 1990 and I bet most of my contemporaries feel the same way. Probably over half of the games I played on of my friend's Atari 2600 I just thought were outright crap. There's a reason almost no Atari franchises are still around in a meaningful capacity today, those games weren't great.

Whereas you experienced a lot of franchises for the first time arguably when gaming was in its golden age from the sounds of it.

So your dilemma makes sense to me, at least for when you were a kid.

Do you find that still to be true for games in "new to you" franchises you play now? I.e. I dunno say Dark Souls or Dragon Age or some franchise that you played for the first time as an Adult?

One odd trend I've noticed in my tastes, is that the first game is usually my favorite in a franchise I don't like much. Which I guess kinda makes sense, in that I probably had my fill of the formula after one game. Whereas my favorite franchises seem to change and often hit their stride later at least a couple entries in.

P4:

Yeah even as a jokey trope, it was a pretty lame handling.

I don't know honestly if P4 was that controversial in the US in 2008. The overwhelmingly vast majority of gamers never interact with gamer hobbyist fandom culture (forums, websites, trade shows etc) in my experience. And then there are plenty of people who just don't care about these kinds of issues at all. Maybe even the majority of people, almost certainly the majority of people who aren't being negatively portrayed. Least that's been my experience in life. It's always hard to truly gauge these things, because the vast majority of people never express their feelings at all online.

I personally don't think you can ever truly say the "US feels this" or the "US feels that" because the country is so diverse. It's something I don't think Japaneses devs (Or heck devs from most countries) often understand about our marketplace/people probably because they are so homogeneous there comparatively. (and we probably don't understand what that feels like for them).

But yeah certainly, if you knew LBGTQ RPG gamers (and I know some), many of them weren't real thrilled about how P4 handled these topics. If you narrow it down people who care about Gay Rights etc that's maybe 40-60% of gamers and then figure only probably a % of them cared enough to where it bothered them. So maybe 25% of gamers? And even among those were probably quite a few that kept going on regardless because they liked the rest of the game.

And then throw on top of that, that P4 was a super cult niche title that probably a lot, probably most, of US gamers didn't even know existed.

Well I hope you enjoy the Endurance Run when you watch it, It's still arguably the best content created here. The banter between Jeff and Vinny is great. :)

Re: JRPGs

Dang I'm super jealous. I must've missed that sale. :( Nice stuff man, sounds like you did it right. And Yeah I get not wanting to pay full price after that even if it's just 6 bucks. I did in full for both 1&2, but to me they seemed so cheap since physical was like $120-200 ish back then the few times I could even find a copy that it felt like a massive sale.

Yeah Agreed. "Arrogant Sony" is back and it makes me concerned about the PS5. There's been some big changes in attitude and personnel over the past year there that is concerning to me. Meanwhile Microsoft is almost kinda likable again. Almost.

No problem Hope you did them!

@slag:

re: lifebar.io - I tried to get on it couple times and notice that too! Weird they didn't send out a courtesy email blast to at least let ppl know. Really sucks, you had so many games listed. It's gonna be hard to remember all that.

re: 1st is your fav - That's true what you're saying about the era of gaming and also the types of games. The franchises I fudged on are few and far between. Looking at this list, games like Metal Slug or TMNT I didn't need that much time with them to understand their appeal. Mario is probably similar but that's a special case for me, I just barely remember playing any of the 2D ones until match later, after Mario 64. The ones that fit better with what I was talking are series like Zelda or FF.

I guess it still depends what type of game it is but I think I'm even more reluctant to judge a game until I feel I spent some real time with them these days. I'm a real "judge the album, not the single" type of guy and I tend to have that attitude with games too. I got super into finishing games in the past 4-5 years which has contributed to that mentality as well.

Maybe cause I really like a good RPG or a narrative heavy game and knowing how the quality of those kinds of experiences can ebb and flow during the course of their run, I just, for the most part, feel like it takes longer to understand a game than ppl general think. Perhaps part of this stems from my frustration with the GB staff since they started to really cut back on reviews. If you remember the early days, everyone would pretty much play the same games and conversations on the podcast about those games were pretty good. At some point though, when no one played the same games or finished any, talks became really uninformative. Seeing differing opinions turn into misinformed or flat out wrong ones really soured me for a period. I think they've tried to improve on that and they have gotten better but seeing games dismissed based on however much time it took to prep a Quick Look was really disheartening. That, and our internet culture of giving hot takes or what not, completely dumping or praising a game to all hell...there is just a part of that wants to go against that cause I guess I'm kinda of a contrarian, not that I don't also part that...

For series new to me as an adult, thinking about it, maybe it's more evenly split. I can definitely think of sequels I liked better. Arkham Asylum I played pretty late and I played Arkham CIty even later but found myself enjoying more. Saints Row 4 is another one, liked it better than The 3rd. Wolfenstein II: TNC over TNO. Gravity Rush 2 I played first and liked that better than GR1 so that's one in favor of the theory. If I were counting series I personally got into late, Persona and Silent Hill I really like the first ones I played more, though with SH, SH2 is generally considered better than SH3 anyway. So it's possible nostalgia has something to do with franchises I got into when I was younger cause I am painfully nostalgic sometimes.

hmm, I agree that franchises tend to hit their stride maybe couple games deep but I think I'm kinda like an addict and I chase the high I get from the first one and find it hard to get the same high no matter how much better the experience.

re: Persona 4 - oh, I wasn't very clear. I meant I was surprised by the overwhelming love of P4 by the GB community, who I assume to be majority US based but what you said still applies. Again, I haven't yet combed through the P4 forum cause I'm still digesting the game (I think I played it way too fast) so I'm not sure what the conversation of the game was like here but comments I've come across are usually something along the lines of "P4 best JRPG" or "P4 best game of all time."

I am loving the ER. The good ol' foul mouthed Jeff and Vinny. lol

re: Arrogant Sony - This is why I been contemplating buying a Xbox One S. I had a miserable time with the 360, it broke on me 3 times but I wish they were more competitive right now. Sony needs to be kept in check.

@liquiddragon:

Re: Lifebar- Is what it is. I see it happen to startup gaming sites all the time. It's why I rarely bother with 99% of them. I knew what I was getting into, I even told the site owners when they hyped their site here on the forums that I usually don't.

Who knows what happened? I'm guessing they weren't getting the growth/activity they wanted and had to go get a 9-5 or something and stopped paying server bills. Probably got discouraged and didn't think anybody would care if the site disappeared. Pretty easy to get depressed a bit when you pour your heart and soul into a project and the world doesn't seem to care. Sure it'd have been nice to know, but I don't think less of them.

Eh, oh well.

RE: 1st played biases and anchoring biases-

I definitely think the more you play a game, the more accurate and well defined your opinion will be. And you're right certain Genres are more impacted by the end game than others. E.g. I just finished Night in the Woods the other night. Loved the game, but got tbh I didn't care for the ending and am debating where I would put in GotY 2017 list as a result. Endings matter a lot in an adventure game since the story is often the core draw. Can't really judge a story based on a few chapters.

And many JRPGs, Action games etc will introduce new mechanics throughout the whole thing. So I get ya, The way you prefer to do it undoubtedly produces better results.

I will say though, personally I feel like my opinions on a game don't generally change that much after the first few hours. On a five star scale my opinion very rarely moves more than one star from my initial feelings and when it does, it's usually down. Seems like most game devs are more cognizant these days that a huge % of gamers never finish games, so the best stuff in the game often comes first. And if there are corners cut it's at the end game. So I do think a snap judgement for a game reviewer probably does have enough value if they more or less feel the same way. But they still gotta get facts right.

I think the Indie flood post 2012 is partly responsible for why there is no consensus on what the staff plays anymore. Totally agree the fact that few of them play the same anything at the same time more really hurts the podcast discussions. And I think you know I'm the same boat as you are re: reviews/quick looks etc. I suppose if otoh they all played the same game though, I'd probably complain that they don't play enough variety of stuff and miss too many things. So there's probably no way of making me happy. Ha!

Let me ask you this about your gaming tastes. What inspires you to play a series for the first time? Is it critical acclaim/gamer community opinion? If so, it could also be that partly why you tend to like the first one you play the best could be because the consensus best (or most influential) entry in the franchise tends to be the one that gets you into the franchise anyway. A way to potentially test that is to look at which games you think are the best and see if that entry also has the highest metacritic score of the franchise.

Maybe you've just got a good eye for the cream of the crop. Or maybe You really do an addictive element to your gaming like you said and nothing can compare to the novelty of seeing a franchise for the first time. :)

Who knows for sure? It's fun to think about why we like things I think. :)

RE: P4- Ah ok my bad. Yeah it was a different time man. But yeah what I said kinda applies in reverse in that there were people who probably didn't like that stuff, but they weren't comfortable talking about it in public then.

I didn't really participate in the forums then (only registered in 2011), but I remember people being universally incredibly positive from what I read. P4 was a lot of folk's first exposure to the Persona series too, so Brad's Mario kart axiom applied a little there. Plus I feel like GB fandom really picked up around then, people were excited by all the positive energy around the site then. The forums were a loud boisterous place back then. Lot less people but seemed a lot more active than it is now. Today this forum is basically more of a GB fan place than a gaming place in some ways.

Yeah manthe P4 Endurance Run is legit. Definitely deserves all the love it gets. Hands down best content this site ever put out imo.

Re: Console warz - I certainly get the impulse. I don't I'll be doing that myself though, I just look at the XB1 lineup and frankly I just don't see enough that I want to play personally. Plus I keep telling myself "well if I really want to play it, I could play it on Win 10 store". And then inevitably decide I don't want to mess with that either. Ha!

Maybe Nintendo will do the job for us by giving Sony a push this year, though Nintendo's 1st party lineup for 2018 seems incredibly weak thus far.

@slag:

re: judging games - It's true, most games are derivative or built on existing concepts and we've all played enough games to be able to judge them pretty fast pretty accurately. Probably 8 or 9 out of 10 times I walk away thinking "yeah, I guess people were right." But there is always a spectrum of opinions so a part of me is curious where I'll land. Another thing is, I feel like I'm constantly looking for that diamond in the rough or that 1 or 2 out of 10 games that I will connect with way more than others. Sometimes I do land way more positive on that spectrum and that's always great. Not from like a "ppl were so wrong" perspective but just "hey, I had a lot of fun with this game! I'm glad I didn't pass on it." The other thing is, I rarely buy games I'm not pretty interested in and I try to mix it up genre wise so I don't find myself wanting to drop a game that often.

re: the GB staff - yeah, I think the indie flood probably contributed to there playing habits. Also, I think when the site really started to take off, they went from wanting to cover only what they wanted to to trying to cover as many games as they could, which they just aren't built for.

re: gaming tastes and what inspires me to play a series - It's really changed over the years I think. I've liked games as much as anyone for as long as I could remember but my gaming world was pretty small until I discovered Gamespot around 2001-2002ish. I lived in apartment complexes so before the turn of the century, what games I wanted to play or what series I got into was pretty much based on what the kids in these apartment complexes were playing and to a smaller degree, kids at school. I don't know how they got their info, maybe they had magazines or older siblings, I had neither. It's not that I wasn't interested, it was enough of a struggle for me to get games. I knew if I tried to convince my parents to get me gaming magazines, it'd eat away my ability to ask for actual games.

Anyway, before I discovered Gamespot, some of my friends had a PS2, FFX, and MGS2 so that's how I got into those series. And FFX and MGS2, along with maybe 9/11 must've been right in my formative years. I feel like those games and that event awakened me into a grey-er "real" world so they have a really special place in my heart, which is probably a reason why I still give FF games a real shot when the rest of the world seems to have moved on.

In terms of listening to critics, I trusted and relied on reviews the most from when I found out about Gamespot to a little past the launch of the 360. On a side note, when I say I listened to critics, I'm talking about the Gamespot staff of that time. I just stuck with a site like I do with GB. While I probably cared way more about scores back then than I should've, I don't look back on those days with any shame or embarrassment. A lot of games got good scores as well as a lot of different types of games so if anything, it lead me to take a look at and try out all kinds of games I wouldn’t have.

I'm not sure how much correlation there is with my favorites in a series to Metacritic ratings. There is definitely merit to your theory about trying out a series cause of positive reviews. I suspect it's 50/50 maybe? I feel like once a series gets critical attention, the one right after has a real easy time of being a crowd pleaser and can often get higher scores.

Ever since I started coming to GB, I don't think I use critical response as purchasing advise as much. Part of that's probably me being older and having seen many more cycles of a yearly gaming output. There are a lot of well reviewed games pretty much every year and it's impossible to keep up. But also, unlike Gamespot where they were much more authoritative, GB from the go established that their reviews were from individuals, not an outlet and the personality driven site really encouraged and welcomed opinions from each member of the crew, as well as the users.

As this point, I feel my palate’s refined and varied enough, I trust my instincts and pick games based on my excitement from hearing about or seeing the game most of the time. Of course I’ll take a look at games the staff’s enjoying or the community’s buzzing about but I’m pretty cautious cause the staff’s pretty vocal about their likes and dislikes, which I’ve come to realize over the years don’t often line up with mine and with the community, it’s even harder cause I don’t know the tastes of most of the users. I’ve seen a bunch of your lists and we’ve been talking so I’m more likely to go by your word but generally, I don’t know what to make of community reactions. There are too many of us and a lot of us are just as ready to shit on something as much as the staff.

I tend to like things that ppl often call “up it’s own ass” or pretentious and it seems like most ppl that come to this site are allergic to that kinda stuff. But I’m also attracted to games with a deep sense of style so I guess that’s where I find myself cherry picking from the site and the community most often. I think I’m pretty open minded about entertainment in general so a lot of it does have to do with time and place. I come to a lot of series late cause I’m cheap but I find it helps me push critical and user receptions aside, further back into my mind.

The other thing that inspires me to try out a series, which we’ve talked about in a thread, is the whole blindspot/resume thing. I just like games, you know? I’m inspired to play games period and playing older games, whether there classics or forgotten gems, it’s not only fun but informative. At the end of the day, I’m just trying to experience them and understand why ppl continue to remember and talk about certain games. I guess that experience is another component of why that 1st game does it for me often. If I play another one in the franchise, it’s an experience but one most likely pretty similar.

Part of playing games I missed is very much informed by critical/user reception so no doubt I often play games that get reviewed well upon release or perhaps later get championed in hindsight. I'm fascinated by the tide of public opinion and how time and cultural, political, or social atmosphere of an era shape and sway the perception of games, of movies, of music. I'm as interested in the medium as any individual game and playing through games in their entirety, I find I get a better historical context of gaming at that time, as well as the current consensus attitudes that form. Even though I've play a good amount games, I'm often surprised by how ppl talk about certain games or series and get the sense that I'm missing some pieces of the puzzle. A lot of this is trying to understand ppl's opinions better and where they're coming from cause we frequently don't contextualize our thoughts and come off pretty aggressive, angry, or narrow minded. But filling in the missing pieces, playing the games I've missed over the years, gives me new perspective on how certain opinions are formed.

How would you answer this question? I feel like I went on and on trying to convince you I don’t listen to critics! haha But no, I definitely still do to a point. I need games curated and narrowed down for me but even then, I pick and choose out of that small(er) pool.

@liquiddragon:

Ah, ok thanks for such an in-depth examination of how you think!

ah ok, so 50/50 correlation maybe between what you like the best and critical consensus does, if accurate, suggests to me that's probably not your main driver in trying a franchise for the first time. Correlation does not prove Causation of course, but it can be useful tool in helping determine what is. Although the way you describe your enthusiast curiosity driven by your own aspirations for knowledge would suggest that a status as a "classic" (which presumably has a high metacritic score) does play a factor. Which would not be a surprise given our previous discussions.

I think we are of similar minds on a lot of this. I like your mental approach, it's similar to what academic critic or historian might do, the desire for understanding. I appreciate the considerations you make about removing bias to get to your own true feelings. And frankly in general sounds more rigorous than what I do.

Some of the similarities I see between us, I've got pretty defined tastes at this point and Like you I just like exploring the medium and seeing what people do with it. Also like you I enjoy talking with other fans (obviously as I'm sure you've noticed) about games to deepen my own understanding or just for fun. I don't play most games right at release either these days. No shame in that, I usually however do try to make a concerted effort hit my guesstimate personal highlights before year end for Zeitgeist reasons simply because the discussion around GotY with other users is the best time of year on here imo. I also am primarily interested in whether or not I'll enjoy the game, not what people necessarily think of it but rather how what they say might inform me to as to whether or not a game might be up my alley or not.

And it sounds like you use critical opinion more or less as I do. As a datapoint of varying importance in an equation, not as a sole determining factor. Although I don't compare my opinion to consensus afterward as you seem to.

I agree with you that people in the GB community and especially the staff tend to be too binary and flippant with their reactions to games. It's either amazing or a trashfire way too often imo. Granted if you are scoring something, you have to make declarative statements and I think the staff plays it up for comedic effect, but almost always I think a game can have parts that of differing quality. Lot more nuance than that yes/no in reality.

One of the very first things I noticed in my time here was how the word "dumb" was basically used as high praise, coupled with a desire to laugh at games rather than to engage with games on their own terms. It was a little bit of a culture shock for me coming here because I primarily enjoy games without having to laugh at them. E.g. Metal gear and Kojima. Granted Kojima's stuff can be pretty out there, but the ideas and themes he explores can be worth sincere consideration as well. Frankly to me it seems a touch immature that some Gb fans seem to take that attitude to be freely dismissive of those would take a game seriously. It's ok to be affected by something. Not saying laughter and mockery doesn't have its place, I'll laugh at absurdity too especially when the game is trying to elicit that. I like to think I've got a good sense of humor and am pretty affable. But I'd rather laugh with japanese games ( and games in general) than at them? Know what I mean? . But it is what it is, no site or community is perfect. I chalk it up to regional cultural differences, this site definitely has a California vibe to it,

I do think though there's still a handful of posters like myself who are gamers first, GB fans second who are still active in blogs/lists/wiki on here. Those are the Gb folk I tend to converse with and I don't see them parroting that kind of stuff nearly as often as the people here who are basically just superfans of the crew.

The biggest difference in game selection/using critical opinion between us I think is another product of when I started gaming versus when you did. And geez 9/11, never thought about how it might impact a young gamer at the time like yourself (if you are interested in sharing,I'd love to know how that affected your view of games if it did. I was at an age where my gaming habits were already well established when it happened) .As a kid for me, there was no Gamespot, EGM, GamePro or even Nintendo Power until I had already played games for a number of years. You didn't have those either from the sounds of it, but when they did show up in my life game journalism was basically advertisements in its early days. So not exactly respected right away by me or my peers for qualitative judgements.

During my formative years, I selected games based on three things - Word of mouth, advertising and renting interesting things with cool Cover art (renting didn't really seem en vogue as much probably when you were a kid if memory serves). So many game boxes, playground rumor were misleading back then, that I developed a sense that I always need first hand experience on just about everything.

So I would generally play just about anything because renting was something I could afford to do as a kid, because I'm curious and you really didn't know then until you got hands on something if it was going to be good or terrible. I'll still even buy and play obviously bad stuff if it has at least one element I think could be interesting to see, especially now that Steam sales can make a lot of games basically the price of a rental back in the day. The way you go about it in that regard is more sane . :) The only reason I don't as often in the last two years is due to time and backlog problems, which has had the unintended result of me tending to stick to my favorite genres and franchises.

So for me I still select games that way. I have a pretty low threshold to get my attention. Critical opinion is just another data point in the mix, but I actually value it less than word of mouth (from people I know like yourself) or what I can glean from trailers/gameplay footage etc. Occasionally I'll just scroll through new releases sometime or new sites and make note of games that jump out at me that look interesting. From all these sources I kinda cobble together a picture of the game that forms my opinion as to whether to try to play it (and these days perhaps most critically when to play it. Time to play games is in much shorter supply than games to play). I'm not so interested as much as if a critic/friend etc likes a game as much as how they describe the features and systems etc so I can interpret how I might feel about it. I've actually read/heard negative opinions on games before that have 100% convinced me to buy something, just because what they describe as a fault happens to be a system I know I enjoy.

E.g. Having watched a ton of Gb content over the years I know that Jeff has the same taste as me in Metroidvanias, so if he likes one of those I know I likely will too since we seem to like them for the same reasons. Otoh he and I couldn't be more different about shooters. So if he likes a shooter, it's probably actually a negative signal for me. Brad is more my GB go to on those kinds of games as well general action games and e-sports type stuff. Vinny's my GB go to on Adventure games, Open world and Western RPGs. There's nobody on GB's staff atm I pay much attention to for JRPGs, Sports or tactics games. That isn't to say I don't value their opinions, it's just their tastes generally don't align with mine even when we like the same games.

So that's my long way of saying I'm really open to and interested in trying just about anything. Although in practice lately I don't as much anymore. In another life perhaps I could have been a curator of sorts, it's something I like to do.

@slag:

hey man, sry for the late reply.

re: "dumb" - Interesting point about the site having a California vibe and how that might be contributing to staff/user attitude. I have wondered if users that echo the crew so closely here on the site carry that type of demeanor into their time of play or is it like when ppl start to talk and act like the ones they're around? More something they fall into when they’re on the site. Because my instinct is the direct opposite, it's a bit hard for me to wholly believe it's completely genuine but it's totally possible, I'm definitely pretty firmly on the serious end. Even with the crew, I don't really get the sense that the way they commentate over games in front of cameras is at all reflective of how they approach games in private when they do their work that's not being recorded. It does seem some users really buy into the very front facing "fun" side of the site.

I like to immerse myself in games, whether that's in the narrative, the atmosphere, or the mechanics. As someone who basically exclusively plays solo, that’s the style of play I’ve gotten in the habit of. I try to pick up what the game is putting down and because very few games go for full comedy, I don’t often find myself in a silly zone. If the game is on the lighter side, I’ll certainly be aware of it and go into it with a more appropriate mindset but I don’t want to see everything through a single lens. I actually want to, as much as possible, see through the lens provided by the developer and that requires you to sort of, meet them halfway and approach the game with the right vibe. For example, if you bring the mindset you’d bring to something heavy like The Last of Us to maybe something like Ratchet and Clank or vise versa, I would think it’d be very hard for the game to click with the player. Being on the same wavelength matters, at least the way I want to experience games and looking at every game through the “dumb” goggle would ruin a lot of games for me. That has nothing to do with right and wrong, it’s just that taking things more seriously, getting really into them equals fun to me personally.

I don't stream and I haven't played with anyone next to me in a long while but I'd imagine I'd be more likely to muck around in those kinds of scenarios. Also, I’m definitely more likely to see things in the “dumb” angle if I’m re-experiencing something. I love what you said about wanting to laugh with stuff rather than laugh at them, it’s a very different mindset. All that said, I do have to tell myself to lighten up from time to time.

re: 9/11 - I don’t think the event affected my views on games specifically, sorry I wasn’t clear. I think I was a very naive kid and the attack was right around the time when I started becoming aware that the world isn’t just sunshine and rainbows. I’m sure a lot of ppl can identify the beginnings of their adolescence, mine just happens to line up with a very defined moment. With that and the following Iraq War, I think it made ppl of my generation terribly cynical which in turn, made games like FFX and MGS2 greatly resonate. Those games touched on religious corruption, government corruption, and conspiracies so heavily, as games developed mostly pre-9/11 but released after, seem almost prophetic. I’m not sure how much of that cynicism existed before, I’m sure a lot of it did, of course they aren’t new ideas. As an immigrant though, US’s reputation really seems to be in decline globally ever since. Growing up, I remember ppl talking about America incredibly positively and moving here ‘98 was a really big deal. Seeing that switch, living under the paranoia of the country during the Bush era, I think I certainly have an obsession with those types of themes to a degree.

re: your tastes - It’s cool that so much of your discovery process was through renting. What are some of your fondest memories of that time? Playing older games or ones ppl have moved on from, I do get some sense of discovery which is something I really enjoy and get a kick out of.

Good point about the staff’s individual tastes and knowing what that might mean to you, I definitely do that math too.

@liquiddragon:

oh no worries man, real life first you know?

No idea what other people do, but wouldn't surprise me if the fans do mimic some stuff. Wouldn't be the first fandom to do that sort of thing. (also another reason I like/liked blogging community etc on here a lot. A lot of people march to the beat of their own drummers there)

Personally I definitely pick up a catchphrase or two if I watch a lot of GB content. I sort of unconsciously do that with everything though. And I definitely chat with people in the GB fan discord and such that use those sort of catchphrases etc often. I've got a friend who tends to talk in absolutes like Jeff, for what I think is the same reason (comedic banter). I mean I'm a fan too to some degree, I enjoy the humor.

I will say GB has changed how I play some video games for the better. I've always been a reasonably strait laced person and that's usually been reflected in how I play games (methodically, 100% effort everytime). Watching Vinny play Open World games inspired me to relax a bit and goof around more for my own amusement when I feel like it. It's also gotten me to experiment more with game systems. To be fair I was really rigid before in how I played games. E.g. when playing JRPGs as a kid I was so concerned with making sure I was prepared for any obstacle, I'd let my party die before using healing items that I wasn't 100% sure were replenishable. And I'd always pick the melee warrior type character in any game. These days I try to experiment more, partly due to GB and other things on the internet showing me what I was missing.

Not sure how much of it is an act or persona they put on for the camera. I feel like it varies from person to person?

This is pure speculation based on attending PAX panels and watching thousands of hours of their content, Personally I feel like Brad and Jeff, probably play similarly to how they do on camera. Jeff is a performer at heart and I think he's basically the same wherever he is. I think his feelings are genuine and are genuine to the degree he expresses them. And yet he also can't help himself but play stuff he knows is very bad from time to time. Brad is similar (not much of a stretch since Brad's opinion tend to be measured anyway) but I do think he plays a lot calmer off camera, I think he gets nervous when people watch and isn't able to play as well when he has to talk at the same time. I certainly get that, I'd be the same way. Vinny otoh, I think his on camera persona is hugely played up from his real life persona deliberately so. I get the impression he's a pretty serious minded gamer (and a transformers superfan) in private as opposed to his screwball antics on camera. Which makes sense given his background in comedy. He knows how to turn it on and off.

Other than that the only other two I suspect may have a difference between private and public playstyles are Alex and Abby. Abby's just kinda finding her streaming playstyle so I feel like she's experimenting on how to approach that and Alex I think is similar in Vinny in that I think he puts on his "game face" for work so to speak. In his case it's pretty noticeable at times how much effort he puts into trying to be entertaining.

The rest (Jason, Dan, Jan, Rorie and Ben)- Strike me as more or less people who probably the same both places. Even Dan, who I think is Dan wherever he is. I think the one big difference all of them share though, is that when gaming by themselves I bet they don't talk nearly as much.

Re: mindset- yeah similar approach here. I don't have much to add as you nailed it so well. I'll actually try to select games based on my mood these days to make sure I give myself a game to connect with what the game is trying to do. E.g. just finished I am Setsuna. That is a super melancholy game, if I'm feeling hyper I would not enjoy that much at all. Kinda stressed lately, so I had take a couple weeks off from it.

But yeah I wanna get what the game is trying to communicate to me too. Same wavelength as you put it.

re: 9/11- Ah ok. That's interesting to me you find your generation cynical. To me you Millenials always seemed almost unreasonably optimistic compared to your predecessors at times. :). The 90's definitely had an "everything sucks" pessimist subculture despite the economy being good and there being tangible social progress. Reflected a lot in the music at the time (alternative rock and gangsta rap), back when commercial music still reflected culture instead of being almost a wholly artificial product these days. The 80's were the happy/peppy times from what I remember, almost to the point it'd make you puke.

Maybe your perception of cynicism is tied more to your community/old community because you are a child of immigrants than to purely your generation? I would have to think even if the decision to come to America is spurred on by a negative situation elsewhere, you still have to some degree of optimism about the place you are going to to stay sane throughout that trying process of upending your entire life.

I imagine it's hard to hang onto that belief when something like 9/11 happens in your new home.

I'm definitely sure there are regional and racial/subcultural differences too. The 90's were good economically for the US as a whole but not in all parts of the states. The Midwest didn't do so hot thanks to NAFTA shredding the manufacturing job base. Maybe where you grew up was just a more cheery place in general.

Whatever the cause, it does give you a pretty unique perspective on the US and games I think. Kojima is kinda scary in a way in the way he sees these themes before they seem to happen here...

Renting- I think it was just not having any idea what game was about until you actually played it and finding games you didn't even know existed. Another perk was that shop owners weren't as knowledge about games back then as they were half a decade later, so they often kept inventory of old games much longer than they should have. That was super cool because back then used game business wasn't really a robust thing (games went bad due to the batteries and the gamestop etc of the world weren't in full force yet). So if you missed a game at launch, you may never get a chance to play it later unless you tracked it down at a rental place. And even if that wasn't true, I wholeheartedly believed it to be true. So finding a title I was searching for at the shop was like finding a treasure.

One game I rented 3-4 times was called "Faria: A World of Mystery and Danger". My video shop lost the manual and I spent most of my time with it just trying to figure out its systems.

Like many things the cover art sold me on it (that's how I got tricked into Deadly Towers as well. Awful awful game). Armored Knight + fire breathing dragon! I'm 100% in. I actually think that's a reason I loved Dragon's Dogmaso much years later, because that game actually delivered on its boxart of medieval knight v dragon unlike the dozens of bait and switches i played in the past like Faria.

Back when US localized games were literally afraid to put female protagonists on the cover
Japan was more open minded than we were

I don't think that game was probably that great, it certainly wasn't popular at the video shop. But Zelda-like action rpgs were actually pretty rare on the NES. So it was cool to even play an offbrand one even if I wondered why the medieval armored knight sprite appeared to be helmetless and have pink hair.

Tbh I had no idea the player was a woman until about 2 years ago. Makes me wonder what other secret neat things the game had hidden in it.

I'm still mad at myself that I didn't buy it when the rental place cleared old inventory. The game's never been re-released anywhere afaik, not even on the Wii Shop.

So yeah, always looking to see if I can find more "Faria"s out there. Even if it's not a "Faria" to other people, it might be to me. :)

@slag:

re: staff/fans - Yeah, I've definitely picked up some catchphrases as well. Fandom can take form in variety of ways, especially ones as passionate as GB. I've seen a lot things in the community that warmed my cold heart and others that rubbed me the wrong way. I guess it's just the natural of the beast.

It is nice seeing different play styles, I've certainly been inspired similarly. I used to pride myself in not using any items in JRPGs but being more aware of game designs and knowing how most things serve a purpose and are there for a reason, I do have more fun using everything at my disposal these days.

Here is an embarrassing question, what exactly is Discord? I don't really have friends that play games and if they do, they're even more casual than they use to be. I've also never engaged with community activities outside of the forum. Discord is something I've been hearing for what seems like years now by the staff and the users but I don't know exactly why it's used or how. I thought it was a voice chat thing ppl used for games to just be in their exclusive groups but it also seems like something ppl just talk on now? Is it just voice or is there a text element? I guess I can look it up but it just seems like one extra thing ppl have to deal with. lol I've deleted all my social media stuff in the last year or 2 and while it's probably a good thing, it does often feel like the world's spinning without me.

re: staff personas - You're probably pretty spot on. They do sometimes reveal different dimensions of themselves than the ones usually presented, which made me wonder. Like when Dan and Danny use to do Danswers, they had a bunch of the others on, and while they weren't completely new ppl but it did put them in a different light and showed a real human side of the individuals outside of their established video game personalities. It kinda made me think, at the end of the day, the site's being running long enough, it could be a job ass job for them at this point. Who knows, it's just speculation on my part.

re: my generation/millennials - You bring up a lot of good points, there are other factors that probably contributed to w/e I've become. I guess I shouldn't speak for "my generation." It does seem like "millennial" covers too many years though. According to Wikipedia, while there aren't precise dates, millennials are born during the early 80s to early 00s. Idk. Obviously I'm not close to being an expert on this kinda stuff but it just doesn't seem right to the untrained eye.

re: games - Anyway, so did you end up liking I Am Setsuna? It seemed like you were going kinda back and forth on that one when you were playing it.

Oh man, I still have to play Dragon's Dogma. I had it for awhile but it seems like a beast.

Thanks for sharing your Faria story.

@liquiddragon This was going to be short, but I ended up basically giving you a mini review of I Am Setsuna. haha sorry in advance.

re:fandom -Yeah exactly, fan is short for "fanatic" afterall..

re:millennial- Oh hope it didn't come across as me criticizing you. I wasn't trying to, was just thinking aloud per say. It's interesting to think about how different people see the same world. I definitely think your experience is probably shared by a lot of your peers. I was just trying to figure out what the parameters of that peer group might be, because the people I know around here in your rough age bracket haven't talked about 9/11 the same way. But maybe I should ask some that i know about it.

re: staff- Yeah I agree with you. I certainly think they have other dimensions too. Nobody, not even Ryckert is a caricature. fwiw Danny O'Dwyer is one the few personalities I've talked to directly before and he was super super nice to me. Came across as a real good dude. Definitely got a soft spot for him.

I also think there's this assumption that gang are super close friends off camera (maybe not so much anymore now post Patrick where they've obviously hired strangers), I personally don't think that's true. I've gotten the impression over the years that Ryan was the one who was friends irl with everybody, the glue that held them together socially, while the other guys tend to do their own thing away from work. Especially Vinny, he seems like he is off in his own world once he punches out for the day and fwiw I've actually heard Vinny say Giant Bomb is a job for him. A job he cares about a lot but still at the end of the day a job. Which I'm 100% ok with. Some of the way he talks about himself makes me wonder if he's trying to position the site to be ok without him. Wouldn't shock me if he eventually leaves for something that maybe has more family friendly hours, sounds the like the video guys really grind hard at GB. But who really knows? Not like I know any of them as people. But it is kinda funny the fandom's overwhelming favorite may be the guy who plays up his persona the most from who his baseline persona is.

Discord- Discord's a pretty cool and useful free app. Basically what it seems to be is Slack meshed with Skype if you are familiar with those. So yeah it's got pretty robust voice chat, but it's also got pretty versatile chat functionality integrated into it and that second aspect to me is what makes it so powerful. What essentially it's done is created easy ways for people to hangout and find people to play with.

One of the major reasons I never online gamed much on console (or PC) is that it's such a hassle to coordinate with other friends. Figuring out when they are home, what games they have, what games they are willing to play, seeing if they are even available etc etc. Discord makes that pretty easy without being pushy since the channels are all opt-in. All it takes is just pinging a channel that has people you want to play with.

I guess another way to describe what it does is this analogy. Imagine if you wanted to play basketball with friends, but the only courts were at somebody's home and everybody lived far enough apart that they weren't walking distance. You'd have to call, text etc coordinate to setup dates etc to make a agmehappen yeah?

What Discord basically does is provide public courts and the ability to create private invite only courts (the latter is mainly what I use. I play most of my games with irl friends). So if you wanna play a game of pickup bball, all you need to is show up at the court and see if any of your friends are around. So it creates this very easy, accessible and organic way to play with friends.

I've been a 90-99% single player gamer most of my life. Discord has literally changed the way I play games to where it's almost 50/50 for me now. I'd even go so far as to say I've gotten about a half a dozen new friends and strengthened friendships with a half a dozen more out of using it. In the last 2.5 years I've probably played more multiplayer co-op than I have in the rest of my life combined. I don't think it's an accident that Rocket League, Overwatch, PUBG/Fortnite etc have become such profound successes. Discord makes playing those kinds of games for a lot longer so much more convenient than it's ever been. At least that's how I feel about it.

Even if you never chat with anybody, it can be an interesting place to watch reactions of people when news breaks etc if you are in one of the public discords (I was in a Neogaf one when that forum imploded last october). The people in the unofficial/official Gb discord are pretty nice from what I've seen.

btw I feel you on social media. I don't use pretty much any of it, it can really consume you. I do better in places that I can be social but compartmentalize like texting, places like here or discord etc. I feel like on facebook, twitter etc you are essentially broadcasting to everyone you know or could know. Like shouting on a street corner. There's a time and place for that, but I definitely don't feel comfortable sharing all aspects with my life with everyone I know. Like the GB guys, I've got variations of my persona that I use professionally, for family, etc etc. Or more accurately I just don't want to share everything with everybody is what it really comes down to. And frankly I don't think everybody wants to know everything about me either. I've always felt Zuckerberg was wrong about that.

Setsuna- Ehhhhhh. 3/5. Kinda funny that game is relevant to a couple things we discussed a while ago (Mid tier indie games and the importance of finishing games). Now I still liked the game, but I enjoy 90% of JRPGs regardless of quality since I just like the format.

To me it feels like Tokyo RPG factory made a game inspired by Chrono Trigger without understanding what made those systems work. So they just copied parts of it and it feels like a cheap copy in some ways (especially in area design, lot of reused assets and it looks same-ish from beginning to end). It's like the opposite of the Bravely Default team (Silicon Studio?), who clearly really got what made NES Final fantasy games tick and figured out how to adapt and modernize it for today. So Setsuna really needed so more attention fitting all those pieces together. Maybe that's just too much to expect from a 40 dollar game made by a B-team that's name implies it's going to be cranking out a lot of these. Guess Square wants a compile heart/idea factory division or something.

Really odd how it had some good Quality of Life stuff and yet some stuff that games did better 20 years ago. The shop design in particular is pretty bad. In order to make money you have mash Square hundreds of times everytime you go to sell items. One vendor has every items available at the start of the game, which sounds great but since you have to highlight each one individually to see if you already own it. Since there are like 200 spritnites...... Otoh it has a nice super bestiary compendium etc that lets you know how many treasure chests, weapons etc you got (I'm missing one treasure chest apparently and it's driving me crazy because I have no idea where it is). And yet again, there's no convenient way to see Character stats, other than going to the weapon equip screen. So mixed bag for sure.

The combat needs a lot of work too. Mechanically it's fun to do. ATB is still a fun way to fight and having a timing mechanic on top of that for bonus damage adds some fun to it. However The combat balancing is not great, I spent 3/4 of the main campaign spamming one combo and winning trash fights in one round and most boss fights without sweating. So eventhough features a ton of character customizability, there's very little reason to ever use it. Until all of a sudden I hit a crazy vertical wall in difficulty at one boss fight, that I completely neutralized by a couple small tweaks to my loadout (something the game never forced me to do even once before). Which would have been really annoying if it I wasn't a completionist type and happened to have enough spritnite on hand to easily make the switch (otherwise it would have been an hour walk back out of the dungeon to buy them or several hours of grinding). Furthermore most of the indicators in the game are light blue for when to time your attacks, I actually found them hard to see given so much of the game takes place in snow/ice environments. Sometimes the characters would be positioned that the indicators weren't even on screen. The dragoon character's jump attack made it so you couldn't even tell if you hit the momentum bonus correctly until she landed 1-2 turns later. Positioning on the field matters in this game for some spells, but again because of the balancing issue there is little reason to ever account for this or learn how it works. It can be a little confusing in determining which character to select though because their positioning will change what order the cursor moves in.

Still all of this wouldn't have bothered me enough to lower it from a 4/5 since I just like playing these. But what really drove home the 3/5 was how the story ended. Going to try to talk around this a bit so I don't give too much away. I don't think there's any spoilers as I stay pretty vague, but I put in a block just case you decide you don't want to have even any idea.

So yeah I had fun with it, probably going to go for 100% cheevos since it seems easy enough to get and there's enough new content to carry me there without getting bored, but there's hundreds of better JRPGs out there. Perhaps the only truly noteworthy things about it are the Piano soundtrack (which you can hear on youtube for free) and the founding of a new Square sub-studio (which only matters to a Square diehard like me).

Dragon's Dogma- If you do ever give it a full go, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.

I have a deep irrational love for that game. I realize I'm out of step with most mainstream critical opinion and most of my friends who have played say things like "I see why you love it, but it's heavily flawed because of X and X". And yet there are definitely a pretty sizeable cult following of people who love it like myself. :)

@liquiddragon: a final update on Setsuna as unlocked 100% last night so I'm moving onto to next game now.

So the postgame was unusually strong, which left me feeling ultimately more positive than I was few days ago. Didn't really fix the story problems that much, but what it did do is actually make me learn the mechanics. And they were pretty cool when you actually are forced to use them. To give an example, On one of the bonus bosses he was essentially healing ~4% of his health maybe everytime two turns out of three, my guys were doing maybe 5% total per turn (if they didn't have to stop to heal to stay alive). I was able to chip away at him for an hour before giving up out of boredom. For attempt 2 by Merely juggling my sprinite loadout to optimize it for that fight, my team went from 5% damage per round to around 20-25%. Pretty huge difference! And no grinding required (that and the reasonable game length were some of the better points. Got 100% in roughly 40 hours).

I still say your time is probably better served in other games (unless like me you are a nutty super fan and fan of the form) and maintain my 3/5. But I ended liking it enough that I'll play Lost Sphear and want to see more games in this vein. See if they build off this foundation.

@slag:

re: millennial - No, not at all. I'm just thinking, in video game terms, there are big differences between ppl who started playing games from one generation to the next, so for millennials, I would think there are massive differences in how a person sees 9/11 based on when you were born in that 20 year time frame.

I’m surprised to hear you think millennials are relatively optimistic. I could very well be completely out of touch on this but I see the way a lot ppl around my age carry themselves as a facade. We’ve gotten so good at editing and selectively presenting a world in our social media platforms, which is informed by celebrity culture, I feel my generation, in many ways, act like PR trained robots. Ppl know the “right” things to say but I don’t get the sense there is anything beyond them. I’ve gone the other way being angry but I think they’re both reactions to the world we feel we’ve inherited. There is a sense of hopelessness among millennials and all we can really do is to consume and lose ourselves in a reality of our own making. Too dark? lol It’s probably too broad to categorize a generation as this or that. Some ppl are genuinely happy but I find a lot of ppl to be somewhat unhappy behind all those selfie smiles.

Re: Vinny - I completely agree. If I was to put money on someone leaving, I’d probably be all in on Vinny. He seems very happy with his life outside of GB and I would guess anything to improve that part of his life. I really hope he sticks around and I don’t necessarily get the sense that he’ll be gone in a year or 2 but maybe...within 4-5 years? They’d need a solid replacement in place for a year or 2 before ‘cause Vinny isn’t the kinda guy to just bounce.

Re: Discord - That sounds pretty awesome. Could I join GB without an invite? Thanks for explaining.

Re: I Am Setsuna - Thanks a lot for the low down and the update. It’s one of those games I saw ppl talking about on the site here and there, wasn’t sure what to think. It’s a great name for a title, sound very much like a prestige indie movie or something, made me curious. I’m glad you were able to wrapped the game up on a better note post game. It does sound like a hard game to recommend. Between the inconsistent quality of life and HUD elements, poorly balanced difficulty, and most of all, a story that left you wanting, what makes you not be harsher? Is everything in the game just serviceable enough and nothing is offensively bad? I guess 3/5 is that middle grade most games fall under.

Re: Dragon Dogma - It seems like one of those very flawed games that has 1, 2, or 10 great aspects to it that makes ppl love it irrationally which is right up my alley! I’m expecting to really like it.

Re: FF6 - Not much to report but wanted to let you know I have started it. About 5-6 hours in at the part where you have to choose the sequences between Terra, Sabin, and Locke. Got done with Terra and Sabin’s, about to do Locke’s section. I’m finding it very easy to get into, things are happening very fast, everything feels very snappy. I’m liking it very much. The fact that I’m doing half circles and quarter circles to do moves with Sabin. Pretty cool. lol Do ppl like this game cause it’s just freaking weird? So far I’m fascinated with it. I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that this is the game that came right before FF7, which surprisingly makes me appreciate both games more.

Anyway, let you know when I’m done with it.

@liquiddragon:

re: Milennials- I could totally buy the generation is faking the positivity, because there is no question American Millenials have it much worse than their predecessors. And thing aren't looking great for Gen Z either. Being pessimistic would be the rational reaction. I also do think there is a difference between being positive and being happy. So just because a lot of millenials feel sad on the inside (for understandable reasons), I don't think think that necessarily makes them pessimists.

Maybe you guys fake it too well because Millenials really do have a rep for unrealistic expectations and cloying positivity especially in the workplace. Many of my contemporaries constantly grumble about it (fwiw the generation ahead of mine called my generation slackers, so while it's unfortunately normal to find fault with those younger than you, this particular "fault" of naive positivity is uniquely assigned to millenials). It's not unusual for me to hear people speculate some bullshit theories about how everybody grew up getting a trophy or thinking they are the most special one etc etc. That being said I've also literally encountered a meaningful number of people fresh out of college who earnestly think they can work 20 hr weeks with flex scheduling and get 6 figure salaries for doing so. So I can see where the perception comes from.

Don't just take my word for it, just about every Mainstream media thinkpiece I've ever read describes Millennials in a similar fashion. All I expressed is basically the consensus societal stereotype you'll see printed just about anywhere.

TBF I think this sort of labeling is largely bullshit, so I'm not trying to argue the label itself is accurate since my age bracket got our own labels that often didn't fit. But that is the label society has decided to put on you guys, fairly or more likely unfairly. And there are some legitimate differences between age groups (like tech proficiency and comfort level sharing intimate details on social media)

Now I suspect that is more a perception based upon the attitudes of college educated White Millenials, but it wouldn't shock me if that isn't backed up reality either.

re:Discord- No problem and sure it's super simple . Just get the desktop app (although I think Discord actually works in Chrome natively as well) and go to the relevant link. Most public ones post a link that anybody can follow.This is the one to GB fan discord (putting it behind spoilers so scraper bots don't spam the channel)...

Once you've got a discord account, just click above, should take you to it. Once you are in there they've got link to individual GB LFG channels for PUBG, Overwatch etc.

Discord's got a ton of functionality so it might take a bit of time to educate yourself on how it works etc, but once you do it's pretty easy. And there are hordes of easy to find channels to join around any sort of subcommunity you can probably think of

Re: Setsuna- Well I'm a liker of things, so I'm going to guess my scores would trend probably a half star to 1 star higher on most things than a professional critic. Plus JRPGs to me are like Cheese Pizza, even bad ones are still enjoyable enough for me because it's my favorite dish. :)

And while Setsuna had its problems, it is a competently made game. Other than a minor nuisance issue where the mouse cursor wouldn't go away when using a controller in the PC port, it had zero performance problems. So while many things about it weren't great, there also was very little other than the Plot/character development I'd actually characterize as bad either. And even that was uneven.

I've played plenty of worse games. It's not like this game is on the level of something like Glory of Heracles which I literally beat with my eyes closed and mindlessly mashing the A button.

Re: Dragon's Dogma- if You want to get even more hype, check out Hamanity's blog post from back in the day. https://www.giantbomb.com/dragons-dogma/3030-34776/forums/dragons-dogma-and-why-you-should-really-play-it-no-1437346/#130

RE: FF6- Very cool man! Glad you are liking it thus far. And yeah Sabin has always been a fan favorite. I do remember people being blown away by seeing Street Fighter inputs in a JRPG haha. The weirdness of the game doesn't hurt its appeal, but I think there's a lot more to it than that. That may be just me though.

Anyway, pretty interesting to see that speed of the game coming across to you enough to where you noticed it. That was something I was wondering if you'd make a similar observation.

I personally think pacing of JRPGs is something people don't touch on often enough when analyzing why they fell from being a dominant genre in terms of sales. I honestly believe JRPGs initially really stumbled in how they initially handled adding in voice acting. The old games that were text only really were brisk, as you can read much faster than someone can speak. Then add in other issues like unexpected long pauses due to localization and conversational pacing stylistic differences in some Anime versus US cartoons etc some of those PS2 era JRPGs feel really plodding. I remember playing FFX for the first time and feeling like it moved a glacial pace compared to I-IX. Something like the infamous Tidus laughing scene would have been over in a few seconds in text at most, probably would be read more sympathetically by US players too.

@slag:

Hey Slag, sorry again.

re: Millennials - Good point that there is difference between being positive and being happy. Just like with most things, I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle in regards to millennials. Looking at the generation from the outside, I'm sure there are things you can observe we are blind to or don't want to acknowledge. At the same time, it's easy to look down at younger ppl and use them as scapegoat or label them in really poor light. Honestly, I look at my generation and I don't feel great about us but it does irk me a bit the way that word is just thrown around, pretty much as an umbrella term for "shitty ppl." It's not even that I don't agree with the sentiment, 'cause I do but are we not the product of our environment? I never hear ppl say "hey, I think we did a bad job of raising our kids", it's always "we gave them everything and they still turned out shitty."

If this sounds at all combative, please don't take it that way. I really don't mean it that way. I wish we can move away from labeling in general cause it tricks us into thinking we have it figured out when all it does is simplify. It's doubly dangerous when we do it with groups of ppl you know? It makes dumb ppl to think their smart and adds to the toxicity I think.

re: Discord - Thanks again! I will give it a shot next time I get into a multiplayer game in time.

re: Setsuna - I understand. I guess when we're talking about things critically, we tend to point out the issues more, and end up sounding harsher than we actually feel. Your initial review (before the update) focused on the game's many shortcomings so it seemed like you were being somewhat generous with a 3/5.

re: FF6 and pacing in JRPGs - I totally thought the pacing was going to be more in line with the polygonal ones without the same level of production. Having recently made my way through Persona 4, the pacing is particularly noticeable. I didn't have the perspective to realize FFX was that slow, especially coming from Pokemon at the time. I wasn’t use to that level of visual fidelity or narrative density in games so I was pretty captivated. It’s a game I’ve wanted to revisit because it is such a taste defining game for me but a part of me is afraid of ruining my love of it.

Playing FF6 did get me wondering why there hasn’t been that many Western indie take out the classic NES/SNES era JRPGs. I hear a lot of fondest for JRPGs of that time and it seems like ppl that pay attention to indie games would certainly welcome them. Maybe I just haven’t paid close enough attention but Undertale is the only one that comes to mind and that one doesn’t even have turn based combat. JRPGs have become the butt of so many jokes in the last couple generations, it’d be cool to see what Western indie developers could do with the form. It was interesting to see Ninja Theory attack Devil May Cry and I'd like to see more Western take on Japanese series or style of games and vise versa.

With any competitive genre or series that capitalizes on its success with sequels, the bigger and longer mentality has really hurt JRPGs. Just imagine the number of ppl that have parted ways with them ever since they’ve become 80-100+ hours long. You’re totally right that pacing probably contributed to its fall from dominance.

Re: Dragon’s Dogma - Cool, thanks for the link. I messed around with it a little when it was free on PS+ a long time ago before my subscription ended. Then I bought it sometime later but haven’t given it another go cause I found the game to be quite intimidating from my 1st hands-on impression. The game seems to be really big and really dense.

@liquiddragon:

re:Millenials-

Oh I didn't , hope I didn't come across that way either. Fwiw I like your/our (I'm kinda a tweener depending on which standard you accept) generation, I think millennials got dealt a bad hand. Frankly I think the Baby Boomer generation did a lot of great things but they also kind screwed everybody that came after and still are.

Unfortunately I think labelling is somewhat unavoidable due to the way the human brain works. Our Brains function in a way to recognize patterns and act quickly, which means all of us take mental shortcuts which can lead to some really unfortunate conclusions like stereotypes. I think a lot of these labels on Millennials actually come from a positive intent of the business world trying to understand, attract and retain young workers/customers (as well as Academics and Politicians also trying to understand the new generation). But like any stereotype, these labels are almost always ultimately far too reductive, incomplete and inaccurate.

re: Setsuna-

Yeah that's on me. That's probably one of the many reasons why I'd be a bad professional reviewer. I tend to be much better at articulating what doesn't work well in a game versus what I find good. I guess my default assumption is that every game is good to begin with so I notice the flaws more? Which is odd since I probably at least like 80% of what I play enough to be 3/5 or better. Before lifebar died it was interesting to see that laid out statistically. I was something like ~20% 5 stars, 30% 4 stars, 30% 3 stars, 15% 2 stars, 5% 1 star.

I'm actually much better now at describing positives about an experience now than I ever have been in my entire life.

I should add that I don't feel any of what Setsuna did well, it did uniquely well. So that didn't help either in highlighting the positives.

re: JRPG Pacing-

fwiw I really loved FFX despite the noticeable pacing issue (to me) at the time. I bet you'll still like it. It's a beautiful game and story. I think you could make a very persuasive argument that it is the best FF game in the series. But yeah man, give me 30-40 hr JRPGs of Setsuna's length and I'd play a ton more of them than I do currently.

I've been wondering that myself for a number of years, why Western indies haven't done many of their own. It's been something I keep my eye out for if I see one. There have been a handful of note that I've noticed and played. Most are meh at best, some are outright bad

• All the Zeboyd Games are NES/SNES style JRPGs, (Breath of Death Vii, Cthulhu Saves the World, Penny Arcade on Precipice of the RainSlick of Darkness 3&4 and Cosmic Star Heroine). CSH is the only one of that bunch I liked
• Child of Light from Ubisoft
• Battle Chasers: Nightwar
• Citizens of Earth
• Fearless Fantasy
• and shockingly perhaps the best one after Undertale is South Park: The Stick of Truth

I'm sure there are others, but there has been a lot fewer than you'd think there would be. Maybe cranking out RPGmaker floodware onto Steam just satisfies the creative impulse of most would be creators/fans (because good lord there's probably more than a 1000 of those clogging up the steam storefront). But yeah Undertale is perhaps the only one I've ever played that would be in my top 100 JRPGs I've played. Maybe South park. I really did like that one. Probably not a coincidence that both of those games are brief in length too. Undertale in particular did a really great job at cutting away the filler from a typical JRPG.

re: DD:DA

it's really not that bad despite how intimidating it seems at first. .

The game world is actually pretty small, much much smaller than most Open world games like GTA etc. I think it takes 3-4 hours to really click, gotta grind some levels and grok some of the totally unexplained subsystems and then it comes to together. At least it did for me. :) You can smash through it in 40 hrs if so inclined. I've probably got 150+ in that game because I've done three playthroughs (1 complete, 2 partials) and just futzed around with completionist type stuff.

@slag:

re: Millennials - Oh not at all. I just wanted to make sure cause tone is hard to convey. Idk if it's cause of the amount of shitty posts on the internet I come across or maybe I think the worst of ppl but I tend to read most comments with a certain obnoxious/sarcastic voice in mind. lol Hopefully the former. Sometimes I read over what I write and realize I can sound pretty much the same depending on the tone you attribute to them.

Sorry, certain words have been triggering me lately. Idk what it is. Seems like there are a lot things to be mad about these days. I'm sure as you said, the term didn't come from a bad place and I realize most ppl use it in jest.

re: Critiquing - You're definitely better than I am at it. I need to get better all around. Matching your feelings with words and breaking it down to how and why, it's a skill that's probably not appreciated enough. Much harder than giving a 2-3 sentence hot take.

re: Western JRPGs - I didn't know there were even that many. Heard of Cosmic Star Heroine and Child of Light, that's about it. I wish South Park the show clicked with me. I liked Stick of Truth well enough but I couldn't stop comparing my enjoyment of it vs. the enjoyment I could hypothetically be having if I was fan. It's a funny problem to have and I'm happy the game exists but a small part of me wishes a series I like got the same treatment instead. haha That said, I must've liked it just fine, I got the platinum for it.

Did you ever play Child of Light? That looked neat and I remember similar amounts of talk in the forum to I Am Setsuna.

Undertale was pretty great. Man, that backlash...pretty intense.

re: DD:DA - Alright, good to know. I should probably give that a real go sooner than later. Bought it on PS3 and who knows how long the online features of that game will last. Totally forgot about Demon's Souls' online stuff going offline last month and now that's going to be a slightly lesser experience. Idk what's wrong with me, I still have to get into the Souls series and I own 4 of them. sigh...

@liquiddragon:

Re: Millennials- I feel ya, I think it's pretty natural to be sensitive to certain things. Especially if you have an emotional or personal stake in something.

Heck I got pretty fired up the other day about DOTA 2's new battle pass because in my opinion it violates that principle of fair play that all successful sports need to adhere to ( I find it upsetting because I care about the wellbeing of the future of the game). And that's a much more trivial thing to care about than one's peer group.

Other more important things will get my dander up too, so I get it.

Re: Critiquing- Ha, well thank you. I think you are better than you think you are though. :)

Personally I feel I've always been bad at describing systems, so I've tried to force myself to actually pay attention to why I like or don't like something as I play games now. I feel like doing so has helped me articulate my thoughts much better than I was able to previously.

Re: W JRPGs- Yeah I wouldn't either if I didn't basically scan the news for new ones every day. Ha I don't think I got the plat for Stick of Truth and I actually occasionally actually like SP humor. ( I was really into that show back in Season 1, then I kinda had my fill). So I hoped you liked it! That had to take you awhile to do.

I really didn't like Child of Light at all. The combat was way way too slow and the plot made me go "hunh?" too often. But what really got me was the game's art direction. The game's tone,art and especially the poorly written very forced rhyming dialogue is just so ... Saccharine... that it actually made me uncomfortable at times. I ended up quitting on the final level not because it was hard (the game is very short and easy), but because I just couldn't stand playing anymore. And I no longer cared about what happened in the story after some plot twists I thought were poorly executed and had poor rationale.

Might have been a wrong time in my life to play it was going through serious stress at the time. I just rewatched a few cutscenes and it's not as obnoxious as I recall it being. That being said, I don't think it's good. Ambitious and very unique, I'll give it that. Still I'd much rather play Setsuna than CoL. So my recommendation would be hard pass on that. 2/5

This is mostly a taste issue, YMMV if you play it. I think though most people feel similarly about the rhyming dialogue at least.

Battlechasers:Nightwar is the one out of that list imo that has some promise if you want to play one, I caution I only played a demo at PAX East. It didn't strike me as a world beater, but it seemed like a decently competent game. It's probably a 3/5 like Setsuna. But if Setsuna is a 6/10, Battle Chasers might be more of a 7/10. Hard to say as I didn't really get to experience the story bits. That's my early impression anyway, I liked it enough I'll pick it up on a Steam Sale probably this summer.

Yeah I remember what gamefaqs in particular was like when the Undertale poll about it being the GOAT game came out. Holy shit, Zelda:OoT fanboys went borderline homicidal. Made the console war fervor look like a skirmish. People lost their minds.

re: DD:DA- Please don't stress yourself over it. I know you wrestle with completionist-itis like I do and I didn't mean to add to that feeling for you.

I'm sure you've got probably actually a few years at least to get to DD, just might be something to consider next time you are in between games and don't have a strong feeling about what to play next. That's all I meant by it.

Just a heads up- I know you got a copy on PS3, but you can get the PC version for 6-10 bucks often and that is hands down a much much better performing version of that game (for one the letterboxing is gone. The Letterboxing didn't bother me, but I know it did bother a lot of people.) with significantly higher and much more stable framerate. I think the PS4 version is a port of the PC version so that's an option too if your prefer it on console, but might cost a bit more.

p.s- Played Gravity Rush Remastered this weekend and boy did I like that game a lot! Since you said a few weeks ago GR2 is even better, I'm pretty hyped to play that one now. :)

@slag:

re: Dota2 - Oh, I saw your post. Have you had the chance to spend more time with the update? Has the picture become clearer on the future of the game or is it too early to tell?

re: Child of Light - Sad to hear it wasn't so hot. All that UbiArt stuff looked really attractive to me but I only ended up playing Rayman Origins. How about Valiant Hearts: The Great War? Did you play that one?

I want to try CoL someday. For now, I got greater JRPG ambitions. At this rate, I'll never get to B and C tier games in the genre. With other genres, I'll play run-of-the-road titles to have that perspective but with JRPGs, it seems like too much commitment to not play just the ones that come highly recommended.

re: DD:DA - I've definitely been eyeing the superior versions. lol I'll decide when I get to the game. I'm really trying to buy games when I'll actually go to play them.

re: Gravity Rush - Damn, you must've liked it quite a bit, I saw you got that plat! Just to temper your expectations, I'm sure you're really going to like GR2 but they did little to address mechanical issues GR had. If you're down with the charm of GR, then GR2 delivers in spades but there are some levels that exposes the shortcomings of the series wide open. I'm mainly talking about the camera which will go absolutely berserk in a few spots. Also, what did you think about the soft lock on enemies? Idk if you had this issue but I always felt like the game wanted me to play slower than I wanted to or tried to. I would very often dive kick on to targets just before the lock and whiff, which meant turning the camera around 180 way more than I wanted to. I had to really train myself to play at a more leisurely pace, which is fine cause the game isn't hard.

Anyway, not trying to scare ya, just don't like to over sell stuff I like.

@liquiddragon:

DOTA Battle Plass- Real limited experience so far. Can't really tell if it's changed much, probably won't much frankly. Again my concern is more from a "what's good for the game" principle kinda thing than actual outcomes being affected. More worried about ppl quitting the game or not willing to play for the first time because of a somewhat legitimate perception of pay2win.

I did have one real bad experience with it yesterday, a rando team mate who had BP (it shows by your name for some subtle social forcing) definitely had some false confidence and was being a jerk about it. Doling out bad advice, blaming teammates for his own very poor play (dude had a 0.3 K/D ratio on a core. He fed like a mofo). But that could be just a freak occurrence. Need to see it happen a lot more often before I think it's fair to attribute that to DP. Bad players behaved that way before DP existed.

re:Ubi- Not yet with valiant. I have a copy on Uplay, I may get to it soonish, kinda wanna rack up a bunch of credit rolls next couple months and that one is short. Yet another log to toss on the Backlog Bonfire.

Yeah tough call on your part with CoL. The best of the best in genre are pretty beefy. CoL is super brief. That's about the one positive that game's got going for it. I guess if you can get a copy for a couple bucks you could play for an hour and do a Steam refund if you think it sucks as much as I did. haha

btw did You finish FFvi or did you move on?

Re: DD:Da- that's the right way to buy games, trying to be better about that myself.

Re: GR- I sure did! Though I must admit I'll plat about any game if I think it's easy to get. That's usually how I decide to or not. None of GR's cheevos seemed abusive, so I figured why not. I like getting all the things anyway, was a decent excuse to play more.

Yeah the Camera wasn't always the greatest, but tbh I didn't think it was bad. I've yet to play a third person platformer (which this kinda was? What if Mario could fly? basically?) that didn't have camera problems of some sort. Seemed in line with about what I expect from that kind of game.

I only had soft lock problems you mentioned if I tried to do hairpin cornering too close to a target. My solution was to overshoot a little further and line up the shot a little cleaner. Didn't really have an issue with it, felt fair to me. If everything landed, it would have been really really easy.

I think my bigger issue is that the divekicking was so much better than the rest of her kit outside of her supers so every fight basically became the same loop for me (minus the extra boss fights). I never really wanted to throw objects or melee. The Gravity Throw mechanic in particular felt real wonky and wasn't that fun. Hated how easy to was to drop items because it would randomly clip a ledge or something.

But that's a quibble. Really enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would! So I'm pretty sure I'll GR2 based on what you said, since I don't really view GRR as having any major mechanical problems.

@slag:

Dota2: I think I understand the concern. The game is so established, so entrenched in its space, it seems like the worst way it can hurt itself at this point is by self infliction.

Is it still a growing game? It's one of those games the general enthusiast press have moved on from that it's hard to tell what the health of it actually is as someone that doesn't play it. Seems like one of those games that's here to stay for a long time to come cause of its super dedicated player base but I can't imagine how one gets into it these days. That's actually what I've always found pretty impressive about the game. It's so popular but the barrier to entry seems so high. I guess it helps a lot that it's free but you at least need a couple ppl to seriously commit with you, don't you? That's a pretty big ask. Do you know anybody that got deep in it alone?

Are games like PUGB and Fortnite siphoning off meaningful number of players from it? If so, do you see a lot of those players coming back to Dota or is it more like, once you lose 'em, they're gone? Generally speaking of course.

Gaming is such a brutal business you know? And the multiplayer arena is so savage, it seems like a game can come in and take it over in a flash. It's been fun to watch but man, it's crazy. A game like Overwatch seems like ages ago. I'm sure it's still pretty popular but it seemed like it took over the world for a minute but I don't really hear about it anymore. I'm sure the popularity of a game can hurt other games but it's also very much a perception thing. Fortnite's success and the coverage of it makes it seem like PUBG is struggling but I'm sure that's so far from the truth.

FF6: Took a little break from seriously gaming but back at it again!

Platinums: haha that’s my philosophy too! I don’t think I have one hard plat. lol

Gravity Rush and 2: The camera is worse in GR2 but I’m more thinking about very specific points in the game. By in large, it’s probably on par.

You do have more powers you can play with in GR2 so you’ll be able to mix it up more but the game is much longer so combat/mission variety does suffer just the same. Oh man, I can't wait for you to try out the lunar style in GR2, it's so good! (GR2 has 2 more gravity styles, in the addition to regular gravity style from the GR1 and moves associated with them.) I also noticed the Gravity Throw issue you mentioned in GR1 as well. I played GR2 first so it was quite a shock how bad it is in GR1. In 2, it’s actually OP. You can run around freely and lift multiple objects and blast enemies with them constantly. It’s actually way too useful. But objects fall apart real nicely and the motion blur on it looks fantastic, I think you’ll be quite pleased.

Anyway, I think you’ll get a slightly better experience. Playing GR2 first, GR1 played out like a prequel, which has its own charms but it’s probably better to see the series in release order.

@liquiddragon:

Re: DOTA 2- It's been slowly declining since the release of 7.0 or thereabouts, so I certainly get why Valve may look at that and conclude that the game is nearing the end. But I think that's the wrong way to manage something like this. Personally I think DOTA is nearly timeless and should be more managed like a sport. When baseball etc starts losing fans, they work on changing up the product and especially on youth sports to get in new blood. The latter half (being welcoming to new blood) is something DOTA has never done well and is something I've railed on about for years. If they just would change their focus I truly believe they could have a game that lasts decades. Instead they seem more interested in cosmetics, monetization tactics and changing tournament structure etc...All important things, but you gotta cover the basics first. Pro Sports knows this. No new players=dying game.

I don't feel like PUBG/Fortnite are to blame (LoL is trucking along just fine), rather that DOTA itself was going to lose players if it never addressed this and it hasn't. Every game/sport loses players over time, but you can win them back the same way you win brand new people over, if only they'd seriously try.

I'd say Overwatch is still really huge, maybe even bigger now thanks to the OWL that just debuted this year. But it's more of a competitive scene now then than a casual one compared to launch. Rocket League is also trucking along just fine and literally no site has talked about that for years. The games media doesn't really seem to know how to cover these kinds of games frankly which is why it feels "dead" if you don't interact directly in the individual game's community. Games media puts tremendous value on novelty, so about the only story they are interested in doing a year out after release on live games is whether or not the game is "dying" (like Polygon's recent piece on Destiny 2). If you look at Twitch etc, you can see the media is often pretty out of step with what ppl are actually playing.

re: FF6- cool stuff man! I feel you on needing to pace yourself. I basically took january off from single player games myself.

re:Plats- Word. But hey, a plat's a plat you know?

re:GR2- all of that sounds good, minus the camera quibbles. But as long as the camera isn't too much worse, I'm sure I'll like it. :)

Yeah the Gravity Throw issue is the sort of thing where I'm glad I tend to play most franchises sequentially. Not always worth it, but there are definitely times like this where it is.

@slag:

Re: PAX - What was wrong with PAX this year? What you mainly do there? Go to panels? Play games? Or do you try to fix in some sight seeing in Boston?

Re: FF and use of summons - hahaha, I was gonna bring up FFX cause I do think the summons were way better integrated than any of the other ones I've played but didn't want to seem like a fanboy.

Re: Dota2 - Do you get the sense that Valve is doing a poorer job of maintaining Dota2 than CS or TF? They seem to have a pretty good track record of keeping their babies alive so again, as someone outside looking in, I do see Dota2 as a "pro sports" game that'll be around for a very long time.

The "No new players=dying game" seems like the biggest challenge of every long running game. I don't know how to solve this atm. It does seem like a problem that could solve itself? Maybe? Cause is it not a perception issue? Games are viewed, still, more as a media product like movies and not like sports but the longer we have massive competitive games that stick around for a decade or 2, the more the image of what a game is will change.

@liquiddragon: I usually like to look at new games at PAX. Honestly that's probably the worst possible use of one's time at PAX, but it's what I've always enjoyed doing. I'll check out a few panels (I watched Swery make Coffee this year) and try to use the free play lounges a lot. I'll go to some parties and such too.

I don't think it was the show's fault it was mediocre this year, just probably a reflection of where we are in the console cycle (nearing the end before PS5) and things going on in the indie world. Not to mention East is always a dice roll because some of the best big reveals are being held back for E3, as they should be.

Just seemed like a lot of major players didn't have booths this year (No Bethesda, 2K, Ubisoft, EA, Capcom or Koei Tecmo) or games to show (e.g. Square Enix had zero new titles. FFXIV was their main game). And furthermore a lot of the games that were there were ones that had been there previously, in some cases many times. E.g. This was Overwatch's like 4th year? And Overwatch was all Acti/Blizz had there. Not to mention it wasn't even playable, just a merchandise shop. Even Nintendo's booth which was easily the most popular one there was featuring basically remasters only (Dark Souls and Hyrule Warriors). Felt like Namco Bandai was the only major player that had new interesting things to show (Soul Calibur 6 and Code Vein). Sony did have Detroit: Become Human, Microsoft pretty much only brought PUBG. :(

And then for indie games, it's clear that there's too much product out there. A lot of guys had booths for already released games clearly in the hopes of sparking sales. I felt terrible for a lot of them, it clearly wasn't working that well for many. E.g. I didn't even know QUBE 2 was out. That game is pretty good, but there was like no one playing it. And this was on Saturday, the busiest day of the show.

So a ton of floor space was devoted to either things you've already seen/played or things that aren't games (Twitch and Discord had huge chunks of the show floor, not to mention hardware people like Alienware). It was still really fun and I did see a lot of neat things (really surprised and excited to see GranBlue Fantasy Project RE: link there even if it was just a video), Just wasn't as awe inspiring as the last couple years.

The rest of it was my fault, I was sick so I didn't optimize my time well. (e.g. I missed a couple concerts because I dawdled).

Re: DOTA 2- No, if anything they used to do a much better job with DOTA than CS: Go/TF2. This just marks a change in philosophy for them that I find troubling.

TBH I'm a bit skeptical about how Valve runs itself in general. My understanding of their internal flat structure means that everybody can more or less do what they want there. Which sounds great in theory, but every business has tasks that need doing that no one wants to do. If you don't ever do them, eventually that will come back to bite you.

No new players is definitely a very solvable problem. It involves stuff Valve doesn't seem to like to do though, namely hiring people and actually relating to their community. Every pro sport is constantly out there marketing its product, doing youth outreach, developing ways to teach the game and make it accessible. Valve does none of these things, they don't even want to do the bare minimum of human labor to even do barebones management of their own storefront and that's their big money maker.

@slag:

That sucks you were sick at PAX. Are you feeling better now?

I don't know what GranBlue is but it does look promising. I guess it's some popular mobile series in Japan but I'm not sure why. I'm glad Platinum seems to be pivoting a bit to RPGs cause I was worried with stuff like Korra, TMNT, and Transformers. Transformers was decent I thought but it was a bad trajectory, especially if you add Scalebound to that equation.

I'm guessing we'll get another NieR?

Next-gen: I can't believe we're approaching 5 years on the generation. I'm not ready. I think part of it is because I waited 2 years before buying a PS4. I think 2020 is a good bet so it'll probably seem more appropriate when we're there.

How do you feel about this gen? You haven't had your PS4pro for that long so I'm guessing you're not itching for new consoles? Or as a PC gamer, do you wish the console goal post is moved further faster? As much as I like AAA games, it seems like game production hasn't evolved enough with the generations and the brute force approach taken to get these games made makes me wish we'd slow down a bit. I obviously know very little about game development but the human cost seems substantial. I really wouldn't mind if we stayed on the current systems for a while and figure out better ways to make games. Lol A man can dream.

Re: Dota: Do you feel like Valve stopped caring about Dota at some point? What changed?

@liquiddragon:

yeah basically got all the way over it the day after :(

Yeah Granblue is a mobile Ip, but it's got some longtime Square/FinalFantasy people behind it. I've watched the Anime and while it wasn't anything ground breaking, it was a very enjoyable comfort food adventure series. Like if the Tales series was better at being Tales.

That PS4 game's combat looks amazing to me and I'm just fan of the artstyle. I think Katalina looks super cool, reminds me a lot of Chris Lightfellow's look from Suikoden III.

That game just strikes me as the next potentially special cult classic game the West's gaming media does not expect (like Dark Souls, Valkryia Chronicles, Yakuza 0, Monster Hunter: World, Dragon's Dogma , Persona 4, Nier: Automate, Nioh etc). The game was just shown as a Video at a minor booth at PAX, but everyone who saw it with me felt noticeably intense hype. People actually cheered during the boss fight. I'm very excited for it!

re: Platinum- I didn't take Korra/TMNT etc that way, but I see why it looked that way to you. Seemed like standard contract work to keep the boat afloat done by their B team so they didn't have to layoff talent in between projects. Frankly even Nier and Granblue strike me as contract work (just more appealing projects). I do wonder if they would have been better off using a subbrand on those licensed Ip games so they didn't associate the Platinum brand with them in the minds of consumers.

I dunno about another Nier, at least from Platinum. It did so well, it makes me wonder if Square will want to bring that back in house to maximize profits and creative efficiency. My guess is they will cut Platinum out of the next one, like Ubisoft did with Southpark and Obsidian.

As one of the many signs I've played way way too many video games, I sometimes feel like I can tell which team made a certain game (e.g. I picked up Last Story and instantly recognized it as a Sakaguchi game). I could tell TF, TMNT etc were not Kamiya projects, so I wasn't too worried.

re:Nextgen- Given the amount of games that come out these days, I never feel ready, haven't felt ready since Gen 5 tbh. Now you know the true curse of buying a console 2 years late, you pretty much can never catch up. :) I've made peace with the fact that I'll always be behind.

Personally internally, it does feel about time for New consoles. I mean I personally don't feel like getting one for the same reasons as you and probably won't for a couple years past launch (maybe never if PS5 doesn't have backcompat, but then again I said that about PS4 too). I'll probably upgrade the ole' PC here as soon as GPU/RAM prices normalize first. It's past time for me to do that.

But yeah, we've had 2-3 really quality years here, years that feel/felt like a typical cycle peak. It's starting to feel like games have just about maximized what they can do with current hardware. Last of Us 2, if it's a PS4 title, feels like a classic capstone last gasp type game, like this is the absolute limit we can push the PS4 to. So it's about time.

I don't feel like I've missed much this gen, I built a gaming PC in 2013 for my primary this time (a decision I don't regret, PS4 got off to a very slow start with no backcompat and PC has never been a better gaming platform) so I've gotten access to just about everything. Catching up on some PS4 exclusives now. Have had a WiiU for a couple years, so I feel I'm good there too.

Not being ready because of too many games feels like a nice problem to have after last gen's slowburn at the end.

As far as the human costs go, unfortunately I think it's unavoidable given the way capitalism works. Overtime most capitalistic systems grind up companies until only a few remain to control a sector. Happens in about every industry. It will get worse and worse most likely until game dev either leaves the US or a couple of the major AAA pubs collapse. Maybe both. That's why I don't try to be too close minded about Games as a Service as there is no question that "live games" potentially allow developers to have actually have some stability and normal hours.

Another solution would be for gamers actually be willing to pay fair prices for games upfront, but nobody seems to actually want to do that (including me).

re:dota- I'm sure Valve still cares. I'm just not sure they totally understand what DotA is and what it could be. I think Valve's attitude is more reactive than proactive, i.e. they see interest falling off and instead of trying to increase interest, they assume the game is dying.

TBF DotA was never Valve's game, it's something they more or less bought, so it's not like there is this native understanding internally at the highest levels of the company.

Riot otoh I think very much gets what LoL is and could be, which makes sense since they were founded in part by Guinsoo and Pendragon (a couple of the main modders/creators of DotA back in the day). Valve does have Icefrog, but afaik he isn't as important to Valve as Pendragon/Guinsoo are to Riot. Riot does tend to mess up on occasion in how they try to achieve their goals (like pissing off the youtube set) and are limited by the nature of their business model, but overall I think they at least see the potential of the game better than Valve.

@slag:

Darn, what bad luck. I guess it's good that it didn't last longer.

Granblue: Yeah, I def like her design and the world looks pretty attractive too. Was it the same video they put out awhile ago or a different one?

I find the art direction to be appealing but I wish there was an additional level of detail to the game overall. Not sure how early they are into development but I'm sure it'll look better.

Gameplay wise, it's hard for me to tell, especially with RPGs. It looks fun? But can it sustain 40+ hours or w/e the length of the game is.

Anyway, I'm not eyeing that many upcoming games atm but this game is definitely one of them.

Platinum: yeah...I mean, I think I want to look at Platinum in the best light as much as anyone but at this point, the contract gigs are as much of their identity as anything else. Platinum can't be just Kamiya and as much as ppl love Bayo1, Bayo2 and Nier are right up there in terms of reception, both of which he can't take credit for.

I don't feel their a bad developer, my sense is that the budget on most their bad games were too small and they made what they could with what they were given. I don't feel it's as much a matter of a good team vs. a bad team but more that they were running into harsh business realities cause even their good games never really sold enough.

But games like StarFox Zero and Scalebound did raise questions about them as developers cause it was harder to blame budget on those titles. This was before Nier came out, which I think to most ppl was also a question mark.

Anyway, it seems like they are making better deals atm and I hope Nintendo will keep funding them after Bayo3. They are even getting into mobile with World of Demons, which looks ok? Too early to tell.

re: NieR: Yeah, you're right. I think I'm okay with that? Square's been getting better with action games so maybe they can make it work.

re: Next-gen: It sounds so crazy to me that TLOU2 is going to be a late gen (or cross gen?) game but it's true. That's kinda sad, that kinda sucks. I really thought we'd see a new ip out of them. Naughty Dog put out Uncharted 1-3 and TLOU last gen, you know?

I've actually really liked this gen more than last gen so this doesn't bother me but it's still a bit weird that almost 5 years in, Microsoft's only put out 1 actual Halo game and 1 Gears.

At this point we're not getting a Grand Theft Auto this gen.

Cyberpunk 2077? Doesn't seem likely either.

I just wish I could look forward to a FF16. I just want FF7 remake cancelled.

@slag: oh btw, not sure if you already got Gravity Rush 2 but it recently got a permanent price drop. You can pick it up for $20 on PSN now.

@liquiddragon:

Hey man, sorry been a busy week. Played in a PUBG LAN event on Saturday and fell down a Persona 5 wormhole (that game is seriously good).Haven't been on GB Much. What you been playin lately?

Granblue: same one, I feel like I can make some reasonable inferences from the boss fight that the combat will be pretty good. Or more accurately combat that I will like. Another thing I can infer is that there are likely multiple playable characters. In the anime and mobile game Katalina is a main supporting character , not the main character, so if she's playable I'm guessing a bunch of characters might be. So could be a a lot of variation to it too.

Obv a lot can and will change and there's a lot I don't know (like is it a linear campaign? I'm guessing it might be at least somewhat Open World given that they showed a ton. But Platinum tends to make more corridor style games), but I see a ton of very promising hallmarks in there that instantly jump out at me.

I think it's probably a Holiday 2018 release in Japan at the earliest, hopefully comes here sometime. I'm sure the visuals will improve. I saw FFXV a year before its launch and it looked like PS3 textures frankly. Dauntless was at PAX East last year and it looked super basic compared to this year. The main issue I saw in person was Granblue was super framey, again though decently fair out from launch. Plenty of time to optimize that sort of thing, which is generally done at the end anyway.

Y'know it's funny, I didn't think I'd see many games in 2018 that I'd want to play and I know I said as much a couple months ago. But I made a list a couple weeks ago, and it's already got 78 names on it that I at least have passing interest in. Probably 40 of those strike me as 4 star games or better potentially, 20 or so of that 40 are basically must buys for me. And E3 hasn't happened yet. So maybe this year will be alright afterall, not on par with 2017 most likely but not every year has to be.

Platinum:- Boy, I dunno about Star Fox and Scalebound, it's really hard to know which party is responsible there. It certainly is a fair question though.

On Scalebound in particular, MSFT strikes me as a pretty terrible partner lately. What is the last game MSFT put out something that really wowed anybody? Gears and Halo have become bland since they went in house. Recore wasn't that well received. Sunset Overdrive seems to be ok, but didn't set the world on fire. Crackdown III is missing in action. Ryse came and went. Minecraft was already a perfectly fine game by the time they bought it. PUBG runs like poop on XB1 and is missing half the content still despite months of optimization and has been completely surpassed by Fortnite on console. Then there's the slew of games they cancelled. Even if they didn't do anything to hinder the Scalebound project, I'm not sure they actually could be much help if it needed it.

Personally I suspect MSFt just doesn't want to make Standalone games anymore that aren't "live games". Scalebound was greenlit by Mattrick and I think Spencer just has a different philosophy. Sure SB was likely struggling, but I have to think it probably would have gotten more slack to figure it out if it fit better with Microsoft's new economic philosophy.

As for Star Fox, tbh I've never thought those games were that good. Always felt they were technical marvels not gameplay ones. So the way Zero was pitched always struck me as strange. That could be my bias talking though. I heard grumblings that Miyamoto wasn't the most helpful partner either on this particular project and pushed them for certain aspects of the game that critics rounded criticized (like the length). Hearing Miyamoto talk about the project in promotional material, He definitely said stuff that made me concerned about the game before it launched(again tbf I've never liked Star Fox, in fact the only one I even liked at all was not a true Star Fox game.), but I don't know how much of that was his influence or him just putting a positive spin on what they put out.

You're right Kamiya didn't lead on Nier/Bayo 2 but Platinum definitely seems like it has an A team and a B team. That's how I see it anyway

So I certainly get why you view them with more skepticism than I do. I just view them as still a relatively fledgling company with designers that have good pedigree that hasn't had many real shots to make what they want without having to answer to somebody else. If this was like their 5th or 6th game that wasn't basically either somebody else's IP or co-developed with the IP holder's owner then I'd agree with you.

Not saying I'm a total believer in them, I just have seen flashes of their potential in various games and think they are a prime candidate to have a breakout hit if they ever get the chance. Granted Granblue is another co-developed game, so it's not going to be really theirs either.

If anything I think the biggest knock on Platinum would be Anarchy Reigns. That game you can definitely say it's all on Platinum.

Next Gen:

Yeah I keep hearing more and more whispers about Gen 9. I might be off on dates, hearing a lot of chatter about 2020, but the train is starting to roll. The latest stuff is about new Xbox hardware. Wouldn't shock me to see PS5 beat Nextbox (whatever the next xbox is called) by a year or more to market. I think Microsoft is justifiably pretty proud of the XB1X hardware.

Just started P5 a couple nights ago it occurred to me that Persona essentially skipped all of Gen7. Yeah P5 is playable on PS3 but it's pretty clearly intended to be mainly played on PS4.

Certainly hope dev doesn't slow down to where that's the new norm. I'd hate to wait 7-10 years for sequels in my favorite franchises. Does kinda seem like what's happening though to a lot of them. Like you pointed out with GTA and TLOU2. Red Dead 2 is 8 years past RDR 1. I mean look at Dragon Age. That last came out in 2014, based on how the whole team is now on Anthem (2019 release), can we even expect DA4 before 2021? There's been no mainline Elder Scrolls game since 2011 (Skyrim).

Given how long Square is supporting FFXV, I honestly wonder if there will be a FFXVi. My suspicion is that game if it ever exists will end up being a MMO replacement to XIV anyway. So it might be XVii before we get another true mainline new FF game and lord knows when that might be. 2025?

Yeah I'm not real excited about FVii Remake either. I mean I'm sure I'll play it and like it, but I'd rather play something where I don't know the story. And Besides the FFVii sequel games/movies haven't been that great. I think I preferred it when those characters weren't voiced.

Like you, I've liked this gen better than last gen. Not sure why entirely. I think for me I didn't like how dark and muddy games looked in Gen 7 (twilight Princess, Dragon Age: origins, heck even Uncharted in places), but now even games that go for that look in Gen 8 have the horsepower to make games that use an Earthy or dark palette not look bad.

Why do you like this gen better?

Thanks for the headsup on GR2!. I haven't bought it yet but I'll definitely make sure I don't overpay then when I do, Trying to limit myself to buying games only a couple times a year. Lord knows my backlog could carry me for years if I wanted to. At the rate I'm going through Persona I'm going to be tied up for months anyway. haha

p.s. for some reason GB only notified me of your second post. So definitely glad you posted that too!

@slag:

Hey, I kinda fell off the site a little myself. How did you do in the PUGB event? How many ppl did you play with? Still enjoying P5? That game seemed to have been received quite well but didn't make the kinda splash ppl were expecting it to, even on this site (I mean by the users overall. The staff response was pretty much what I expected.) Last year was tough but I kinda got the sense that some ppl were sorta tired of the formula. You got more thoughts on it? I think I still need a bit more time away from Persona but the darker tone I find more appealing than P4.

I've just been playing FF6 here and there. I think I'm almost done, I'll probably get back to you soon. Other than that, I've been sorta messing around with Demon's Souls cause I never got into the Souls series but not playing it that seriously. I’m afraid to really commit to it ‘cause even though I know I’ll probably like it, I’m not really looking for a lengthy frustrating time atm. I’m enjoying it the way I’m playing it though, with zero commitment. I tried to look up beginners tips about the game but I can’t make any sense of what they’re talking about and ppl have moved on so far from it, I feel lame asking about it.

Since taking my little gaming break, I’ve been afraid to really invest in anything. I have trouble doing anything in moderation so I’m little scared to fall in the gaming hole again ‘cause I know how deep it is...So yeah, I’ve just being making my way through FF6 and poking at Demon’s Souls but not playing in long stretches which does help with not falling into that hole but it’s definitely not the optimal experience cause I never feel like I’m making a dent in anything.

Re: Granblue and other upcoming games: Yeah, I think it looks fun but I wonder if they have the RPG chops to provide enough variations and challenges to keep the combat interesting for an extended amount time. I hope so but it’s been a recurrenting complaint for me with games like The Witcher 3, NieR: Automata, and most recently Persona 4. It’s something I almost never find myself complaining about in FF games.

I’m guessing it’d be more open? Nier was fairly open so they should build on what they learned on that.

What are some of your must buys this year? I’m interested a lot stuff that’s come out already and is coming out this year, I guess in terms of must buys, I’ve always been pretty narrow minded.

Re: Platinum: I think they’re good developers, maybe even great but it’s their financial reality that’s the issue. Games like Madworld, Bayo1 and Vanquish just didn’t sell enough to make them a self sufficient studio and yeah, Anarchy Reign probably put them deeper in the hole. So making games like Korra, Transformers, and TMNT helped keep the lights on but I think it’s a sign of the health of the company. It also looks like Activision gave them like $2 and change to make all 3 games and it made them look really bad. Idk how much they benefit from successes like Nier and maybe Granblue but they’re in a position right now and have been for a few years where it looks like they’ll always be working for someone else.

I’m happy they’re getting into RPGs and growing as developers. I do wonder how long their relationship with Nintendo will last and what they’d look like without Nintendo. Would Nintendo bankroll Bayo4? Wonderful 101 and Star Fox Zero didn’t exactly set the world on fire and it seems like Bayo3 would be a good place to stop.

My concern comes from a place of love. I’ve been on the Platinum bandwagon from pretty much the start and to me it looked like they were barely keeping it together paycheck to paycheck. I think Nier makes them look way healthier of a company than they actually are and games like Granblue needs to do well. The couple years before Nier was pretty rough, especially with Scalebound’s cancellation. Kamiya even said Nier saved Platinum (though he’s kinda crazy himself. I love his games but I don’t take his words seriously.)

Re: This gen vs. last gen: I think the dark and muddy thing for sure is a contributing factor. Having moved here from Japan, I think I was pretty snobbish and biased for Japanese games and as a console gamer, I could be pretty contend playing my Japanese games up until the 360 era. I moved here during the PS1/N64 gen and during that time I was introduced to games like StarCraft/Red Alert, CounterStrike, and Tony Hawk and in the PS2 era, I got into stuff like GTA and probably a few others I’m not remembering atm but I took those games as the exceptions. It took me the longest time to even accept ppl liked Mortal Kombat without irony here in the States. When I first saw it, I thought it was like a joke game, a super poor imitation of games like Street Fighter.

Anyway, last gen, if I was going to have a gaming life, I had no choice but to get into Western games. On the one hand, that was great cause I’ve definitely acquired a taste for them but I still really missed and wished there were more competing Japanese games.

Some of the biggest hurdles were the 1st person perspective and the FPS. I don’t know anything about the European scene but Americans just seem to love the 1st person view and FPS’ and it’s something that took me years(probably the whole gen) to get comfortable with it. CS was no problem, I think FPS’ on the PC are a different story but as primarily a console player, I struggled with the 1st p-view and FPS’ majorly. Shooters in general were such a focus last gen and it just seem to me like a very shallow mechanic of press and kill. And the 1st person view, which usually gives you less field of view than we actually have in real life, I found to it be crippling as someone that had been playing in the 3rd person most of my life. Even with the same press and kill mechanic, I did find myself enjoying TPS’ more right away cause I didn’t suck as much at them.

Anyway, I’ve gotten over that hump and I see some of the depth in shooters, though I still suck at them.

I think this gen feels a bit less shooter focused and with Japan being a little more competitive in the home console scene, I feel like I can really enjoy everything. We can always use more Japanese games though.

I think not having a DS/3DS really hurt me during that period.

Oh also, another reason this gen is better: I can accept the Wii but that 2 year period when Sony and MIcrosoft got on the motion-control train was fucking brutal couple years. The WORST, LITERALLY THE WORST.

@slag: for safety

@liquiddragon:

No worries about FF6, take your time, hope I didn't put any pressure on you. Just being conversational, I liked hearing your thoughts earlier.

End of the day, you gotta do what's best for you and your own happiness and well being. If that means an extended break from games or longer, that's what you gotta do. If there's something I can do to help, please let me know. Hopefully our back and forth doesn't add any stress/temptation for you, if it does I can shorten my replies or stop altogether if need be. Whatever helps, I won't be offended. I get that this sort of compulsion can be draining. I probably have a lesser version of it myself.

The Pubg event ended up not being a tournament afterall, but still we had 20+ guys there. So we just rotated squads all day and night. Was a ton of fun. :)

Persona 5- Definitely still playing Persona 5, that's gonna take me a good while. Not going to rush it, since I'm really enjoying it. It's a massive game as Persona games always are, and me being the nutter I am decided to play on Hard whilst simultaneously trying to max stats and social links in playthrough 1. So I'm replaying a lot of weeks to optimize social links (well "confidants" in this one) and got crushed by the first boss several times since I got to him so underleveled due to trying to minimize trips into the dungeon. So I'm maybe 40% of the way through? Just made it to July. And I've got 50+ hours in officially (a lot more that went uncounted due to reloads).

I feel confident enough in it now to say this is my personal favorite of the Persona series by good measure already and there's a good chance this will end up being one of my top 5 favorite JRPGs I've ever played if it keeps up this pace. It's really that good. There's a ton of nice QoL improvements with the Persona mgt system that would make it really hard to go back to 3 or 4 and the dungeon design in particular is light years ahead of those games. The new catherine engine really helps the game feel a lot more lavish, which as much as I hate to admit really held back the previous games for me personally. I do like the story quite a bit more than 4 at this point (does have more gravitas to it) and I think the writing is better than 3's, although there's a lot I haven't seen yet. Another big plus is I don't feel any of the characters feel out of place unlike the past 2 persona games. Nothing wrong with having a fantastical character or two on the roster, but it helps if they have a believable relationship (in terms of not breaking character) to the rest of the cast where they fit in organically. E.g. of what I mean when it's done wrong, Teddie, just his presence alone I felt really changed the group dynamics in a bad way where we didn't get to see more worthwhile interactions between the teammates develop because he was always horndoggin or being weird/goofy to the point it often overshadowed everything else.

The one quibble I have with P5 is I think it still doesn't give you enough tools to figure out how to manage your time socially (so you don't have to either make a big spreadsheet and replay bits or look at a guide) although it does feel like the calendar is more forgiving than past Persona games.

That being said if Persona 4 combat bored you, I'd expect you'd probably have the same reaction here. I feel like having played P3&4 that I already know how to play this game's combat pretty well and haven't to really learn the system. The Boss fights have some neat wrinkles but other than that not a whole lot has changed. Which personally I'm ok with, I like the Persona combat system a lot as is , especially on harder difficulties.

As for the public reaction to it, kinda ties into what we were talking about how the site here itself has changed. For one Persona isn't a new thing to people anymore, it wasn't going to wow people the same way again. This series isn't like Mario or Zelda where there are big mechanical changes every mainline release. It's iterative and that's 100% ok by me because the formula is great and the story/characters is a big part of the draw. Not surprised people were let down, they had crazy unrealistic expectations that no game could ever match. Didn't help that the staff seemed pretty uninterested in the game too, I think that was also a big reason people were excited because they were secretly hoping to rediscover the magic of Jeff and Vinny together on another endurance run. However on the plus side for me personally, that lowered my expectations a little so I'm really enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.

And then there's the thornier issues about how certain identities etc are portrayed in the game. I don't blame anybody for not liking how P5 handles it and yet none what I've seen so far is anything different than you'd see in most Anime or Manga. Just something to chalk up to cultural differences I guess. TBF they aren't portrayals that affect me on a personal level, so it's probably easier for me to shrug off and still be able to see the good parts.

You know if you are testing the waters with Demon Souls, maybe you should consider Dark Souls Remastered instead when that comes out next month (if you've never played Dark Souls). Would seem like a good time to do it, and a bunch of people would be in your shoes at the same time.

GBPR- Did you see Cygames and Nintendo just announced a new joint mobile game? and Nintendo bought 5% of Cygames stock?

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/26/17288692/nintendo-dragalia-lost-mobile-rpg-cygames

That only makes me feel even better about Granblue Project. Nintendo only partners with talented studios, well studios they think are talented anyway. :)

We'll have to see more to know if your other concerns about combat variety are addressed.

2018 must buys for me- YMMV of course. I've got a pretty wide palette. This is what I've seen so far that interests me.

1. GranBlue Project RE : Link (if it releases in 2018 or the US at all)
2. Red Dead Redemption 2
3. Dragon Quest Xi
4. Shadow of the Tomb Raider
5. Ghosts of Tsushima (might be 2019)
6. Indivisible
7. Spelunky 2
8. Valkyria Chronicles 4
9. Yakuza 6 and Yakuza Kiwami 2
10. God of War

Other candidates, Battletech, Blazing Chrome, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Into the Breach, Dark Devotion, Omensight, SoulCalibur 6, Hero-U and about 1-2 dozen more. Not as instant buy as the 111 I mentioned above, but stuff I'll eventually pickup.

I'll also get Monster Hunter World as soon as my friends might play it. Don't want to play it twice.

Lord know I shouldn't buy half of this list, since who knows when I'll actually play them.

Platinum- Yeah I'm with ya there. I'd like them to be able to achieve financial and creative independence. I think most studios would have folded in their situation, speaks well imo of their talent and how their peers view them.

I actually kinda wonder if Nintendo is their ultimate exits plan. Ending up as a 2nd party software team like Monolith Software, where they sell Nintendo ~ 60% of the company or something similar. Granted Platinum left Clover/Capcom because they wanted to make their own things, but given how hard it's been, maybe they will feel differently now. I could see that being advantageous for both parties, I bet Nintendo would let them do their own thing.

Gen 7 vs 8- Yeah even Twilight Princess was a real drab affair with a brown palette. First Zelda game I ever set down because I was bored with it. I just didn't enjoy exploring a Hyrule that looked like that.

I could see why you would think that about Mortal Kombat. It really tapped into a very specific niche subculture in the US that revolved around watching very very poorly dubbed Martial Arts flicks that were show at like 1 AM on Cable. I doubt that resonates at all outside the US and Canada. Even if that wasn't a subculture you were into, chances are you knew of it given that was back in the days of the monoculture. MK was everywhere when I was a kid, there was a full blown moral panic over it. I knew kids who parents wouldn't let them play it.

That's a very good point about shooters. I'm not much of a shooter man myself typically. I also don't think they are that fun to play on controller in general, though the whole world seems to disagree. It's either too hard to aim, or the game's ai lets you basically cheat through aim assist. So don't feel bad about not being great at them. I remember playing Medal of Honor: Frontline on PS2, which I don't believe has aim assist and really struggling.

What's funny about this gen and the comparative lack of shooterification of everything, I'm actually playing a lot more shooters this gen. More than I ever have in my life. I think perhaps I just didn't like the CoD style twitch deathmatch testosterone laden shooters that were everywhere. Overwatch and PUBG have different gameplay that I find a lot more compelling, I do often like Shooting ok enough when it's basically paired with something else (like RPG elements in Mass Effect, or occasionally loot grind games like the Division/Borderlands). But playing something Rainbow Six Siege or CoD is basically a way for me to just be reminded that I don't have the reflexes of a teen anymore.

Yeah Capcom, Square, KoeiTecmo, BandaiNamco and especially Sega/Atlus seem back and relevant this gen. And we did get a last gasp from Konami with MGSV. I like Japanese pubs in general better than the Western ones, so like you as a byproduct of them putting out console games there's more I want to play this gen.

@slag:

Thanks man. I’ll definitely let you know if I need help. I think I just have to man up and be more disciplined. I’m rather gluttonous with the things I enjoy so I should set a hard time limit per session. I don’t think the way I like to play, which is pretty obsessively, is that good for me. I’m already a super introverted guy and because I pretty much exclusively play single player games, I think I get really detached to everything around me and it feeds into my antisocial tendencies. But the way I’m doing it now, chipping away every few days, playing with my food, I don’t think is the way these games were meant to be experienced. I find it hard to achieve a good balance with games. Like movies are relatively short affairs and TV shows have natural breaking points but games, for someone like me that likes to dive in, it’s a real pit.

But na man, I’m really glad to talk to you. You’re like the only thing I like about GB right now. I’ve been pretty down on the site for the past couple weeks and I realized I haven’t consumed any of their content for months except for the occasional podcast, which I haven’t liked much either. I literally can’t seem to enjoy any of their content and a thread about why there is more activity on ResetEra than here kinda made the forum seem especially unfriendly. I’m hoping I’ll come back around, that it’s just a temporary disinterest, ‘cause I’ve been following the staff for so long. But right now, I feel like I’m just done with the site. The worst part is I’m not interested in finding another site.

Have you had interactions with the mods? What do you think about the moderation here?

Re: Persona 5 - Damn, top 5 JRPG huh? QoL improvements are definitely welcomed. P3/4 suffered from slick but clunky menus that really bogged down the experience the more you played. Also, very glad to hear the dungeons are much better. Those 2 aspects are the primary reasons I took a long break between P3 and 4.

In terms of time management and social/academic scheduling, my sense is that the developers don’t want/intend players to see everything in 1 playthrough. They want individuals to have a unique experience, their own story, where some relationships work out and some don’t and some you just miss out on like in real life. The problem is, most experienced gamers aren’t trained to accept that. With me, I’m not looking to play multiple playthroughs. I have too many other games I want to see through so I’m always going to try and see as much as possible the 1st time around which becomes a tremendously exhausting endeavour. Yet, there is no denying the appeal of the structure, the addictiveness of the loop, the charm of the settings and characters, and the allure of the mystery and style. I just wish the design of these games and I gelled better ‘cause everything about the them I’m completely into.

How are you finding the script and the voice work? That was another frequent complaint, that it sounded too stiff and unnatural.

Re: Souls - haha, I’ve bought 4 Souls games, Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls 3 and haven’t gotten into the series yet. I feel like it’d be so wrong to buy another one. I’ve enjoyed playing DeS blind not knowing what anything means, it was just a bit discouraging not being able to understand the tips for beginners haha. Maybe I can switch over to DS if I see a lot of activity on the site.

Re: The game by Cygames and Nintendo - It looks ok? Need to see more. Odd that in the video, the game footage switches between 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratio.

Re: 2018 must buys - Yeah, those all look good. I guess I look at what I have on shelf to still play from last year and I’m more excited about playing those (P5, Prey, The Evil Within 2, RE7) than this year’s stuff. I also haven’t bought Yakuza 0 yet and that seems like the game I should get to the most. Games from the year before like Hitman and Dishonored 2, I still really need and want to spend more time with as well. I’ve only scratched the surface on those. I’d definitely like to get to everything you listed but fuck, it never stops...lol

VC4 I hope to god they don’t fuck it up.

Are you gonna get DQXi on 3DS to see the 3D/2D thing?

Any excitement for Below? That game kinda got me hyped when they revealed it but I’m not much of a rogue-like person. Still hope it turns out good though.

Re: Platinum - Yeah, Monolith acquisition definitely gives me hope for Platinum. That'd be the best case scenario I think.

Re: Shooters last gen - Yeah, CoD games never clicked with me. I remember enjoying the 1st on PC but last gen, if you didn’t like CoD, you were kinda shit outta luck. Everyone was chasing it but this gen, developers branched out and the focus isn’t on just one style. For me, I just hated the way the campaigns were designed, how you couldn’t be too far ahead or behind, that it was so tightly scripted, you felt like you were in a tiny glass box. I just couldn’t get my mind around that.

@slag: