yyninja

Not surprised at all. I haven't followed the entire games industry through it's lifespan, but afaik starting from 2004 with WoW there's always this pattern where game developers bandwagon on the hottest craze:

- First there was WoW and every game developer wanted to make MMORPGs.

- Then we had COD MW, and everyone wanted to make a modern military shooter.

- Then there was League of Legends and everyone wanted to make a MOBA.

- After that there was PUBG and Battle Royal games.

- I think the new hotness is going to be Anime or Anime-adjacent games, like your Genshin Impact and the upcoming Project Mugen.

The common theme with most of these trends is live service, online and multiplayer which means a guaranteed flow of income. Other companies are still surviving but are making money through microtransactions, DLC, merchandising or re-releasing the same game again with more content (SquareEnix and Atlus are especially guilty of doing this).

So many great memories. I remember seeing it first played on the SNES at my neighbor's place. I wasn't into JRPGs at that time, but was impressed by the detailed sprite work. I didn't get very far playing it at his place and he would never lend me the cartridge. Years later, I would play the game through emulation and remember never using Sabin because I couldn't figure out how to do the half circle moves on a keyboard. I did eventually play the game "legitimately" on the SNES Classic and found the game's dialog holds up considerably well.

I love how there are so many hidden scenes in the game. The aforementioned Coin Toss only happens if you have Sabin and Edgar in the party and sleep in the Figaro Castle. The dream sequences when you have Shadow in the party. The reunion scene if you bring Gau back to his father.

My favorite sequence would be the end credits where it shows all the characters trying to escape Kefka tower.

Great list! E3 2023 being cancelled is the front runner for me.

I would also like to mention the issue of overpriced video cards (*cough *cough NVIDIA *cough) with low memory capacities like the RTX 4060 lineup. Recent PC releases like Forspoken, Hogwarts Legacy and Last of Us Part I Remake all run terribly at 1440p and are unplayable on these cards.

Interesting... so IGN's interview with the producer of P3 Reload confirms that this is a remake of the original Persona 3, so no female protagonist and no The Answer.

They want to avoid cannibalizing themselves to avoid making the recent P3P release pointless to play or they are planning another revision of P3 Reload later down the line like they have with all the other Persona games. Either way ATLUS is exploiting their fanbase similar to what SquareEnix does with FF7.

On the upside, at least their new game from their Project 0 team (ex-Persona guys), Metaphor re Fantazio looks promising, it needs work on the graphics though, looks even worse than P3 Reload IMO, could also be due to their proprietary engine vs Unreal.

Honestly you kind of played the best Final Fantasy has to offer (as of now).

Skip I-III because their systems are vastly improved upon in the later games.

IV is an inferior version of VI, but it's not bad.

V is a good choice if you only care about gameplay.

VI is a classic and must play.

VII Remake haven't played yet.

XII is... okay? Story is heavily inspired by Star Wars Episode I. Very forgettable villain. Feels like playing a single player MMO if that is your cup of tea.

XIII hard skip. Sure there are positives like the excellent piano and violin score and nice looking graphics, but very weak story and cast.

XV not good, confusing plot. Story in the base game is incomplete and can only be fully understood by watching the Kingsglaive movie, the anime and playing all the DLCs.

@sombre said:

I don't have GamePass and don't desire to get GamePass anytime soon. I did some more research and looks like it isn't a PC port, but rather an emulation of the 360 version where I can play the game via the cloud.

@av_gamer said:

It's tough to say, I'm not a mind reader so I don't know if the decision to exclude black characters was intentional. Japan is a homogeneous country so the people there have limited interactions with other ethnicities.

Personally I'm excited. FFXVI needs to have a new direction because the franchise hasn't had a bona fide single-player game hit since FFX, and that game was released over 20 years ago. (Btw. FFVII Remake doesn't really count because the original has a legion of fans that will buy anything FFVII related.)

Yoshi P stated in multiple interviews that he wants the Final Fantasy games to return to being "must-buy" games. And like it or not, action games are more appealing than turn-based games to an international audience.

Of course, Yoshi P has made a couple goofs. That comment about having no black characters in the game speaks of ignorance. And the tirade of a game labeled as "JRPG" as a derogatory term is a bit confusing... maybe he took the comments from Phil Fish and the like a bit too close to the heart. But FFXVI is more than one person, and I think the game overall looks amazingly polished.

After watching the most recent Tears of the Kingdom trailer: Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

Nintendo:

I would like for them to announce a new console soon. Steam Deck is eating Nintendo's lunch right because it directly competes with the Switch. 3rd party games on the Steam Deck can be bought at huge discounts compared to the same games on the Switch.

And before you say... but Nintendo still has 1st party titles, there are Switch emulators you can install on the Steam Deck (although performance varies depending on the game).

Sony:

In a good spot right now. Reviews for PSVR2 sound extremely positive. Console is in high demand and even though PS5 has a lower TFLOP count than Series X, recent games like Wild Hearts indicate that games are better optimized to run on Sony's machine. Not sure how well their new PS Plus is working out as a competitor to Game Pass though.

The whole tactic of getting various governments to block the Microsoft Activision deal is kind of silly given how often Sony secures exclusive DLC content or deals with 3rd party studios like Square Enix.

Microsoft:

Gamepass still going strong, about to ramp up again soon once Starfield releases. Nothing to comment on their consoles.

Predict that they will merge with Activision by the end of this year and hopefully kick Bobby Kotick out. Dude doesn't give a shit on making good video games and only cares about milking a franchise until it dies.

The appeal of Microsoft will be less about their consoles, but more about their games.

PC:

Video cards are still prohibitively expensive for general gaming. It sounds crazy now, but only a few years ago the mid-tier RTX 3060 Ti retailed for $399, while the top-tier RTX 3080 retailed for $699. One plus is that video cards can now be purchased for close to their retail prices or lower except for the top tier cards.

Outside of Portal RTX and Minecraft RTX, I still feel that Ray Tracing is a gimmick that not many players will actually notice while playing.

The introduction of DLSS 3 is also a bit strange, given that it only works well if the FPS is already high. I am excited that AMD owners finally have a decent upscaling solution in FSR2.

The biggest tech problem I see is shader compilation stutter that affects all Unreal Engine games, this stutter is an engine/development issue and can't be "fixed" even with the most powerful CPU and GPU out there.