After playing ~2400 hours of DOTA 2 I was able to quit cold turkey last year. I felt like an ex-smoker walking through a Las Vegas hotel, turning up my nose while I watched this.
My favorite FF beyond the SNES games. I love this game. I always felt that FF needed to get more complex like this and not more automated like FFXIII/FFXV.
Some misinformation about the License board differences here. Originally you didn't have classes and you customized your abilities starting from the part of the board with the default starting weapon for each character. In the international EU/JP version you could choose one class, and were limited to those abilities. In this version you choose one class initially, then beyond the first Esper battle you choose a second class for each character. The job system adds a great deal of tactics compared to the 'open' license boards of the original game, where you could learn anything and everything.
Worth noting that you don't have to play this game like an MMO/Dragon Age: Origins, you can choose to micromanage all actions. Also if you don't like Vaan or Penelo, the main characters involved in the actual story of the game are actually Basch and Ashe. You can ignore the street rats entirely, they have no real story arc beyond dreaming of being sky pirates.
They're all worth playing. The first game always gets a sort of 'less than' tag from folks but it goes places as great as the other three.
I don't think the Uncharted games aren't worth playing, but my experience with the first three was not at all what everybody else seems to have gotten out of them. Putting this in spoiler blocks because it's a little off topic and I kinda wrote a lot.
I didn't play any of these games until after their heyday. I played Uncharted 2 sometime in 2012, I think - long after that initial "holy crap, how did they make this look this good" luster had gone away. What I was left with was a decent, if unremarkable treasure-hunting adventure full of characters that were pretty well-written and gameplay that was at best dull and at worst grating and annoying. The blue guys at the end are kind of infamous for being ridiculous bullet sponges and they sucked, but the rest of the gameplay was just as dull to me. Enemies take tons of bullets everywhere except their heads, which are hard to hit because the PS3 analog sticks aren't great for shooters and Naughty Dog's aiming code never made it feel satisfying. So what I was left with was a game full of set pieces that were fun to look at but quickly got frustrating because none of it was satisfying to actually play. Platforming was just as bad, which is an even worse complaint because Naughty Dog's previous franchises were all platformers. It all felt like a rote summer blockbuster to me - pretty, but with no substance whatsoever. Also worth noting that about this time, I was playing through Half-Life on Hard like it was nothing and running through Halo campaigns on Legendary - I won't claim to be amazingly good at shooters but this was not a problem with contempt for controllers or lack of skill in shooters.
A lot of time passed between the time I played Uncharted 3 and the time I played 4, so it might be less that the game changed much and more that I changed. Or it might be that the PS4's controller is way better for shooters than the PS3's, so I'm honestly willing to give the first three a chance again on PS4. But I seriously doubt they'll top the fourth game for me, and honestly I'd rather see if The Last of Us's gameplay is actually better with a PS4 controller than a PS3 controller.
I'm right there with you on the shooting being garbage. I won't ever replay any Uncharted games. But I have started to replay The Last of Us, the remastered version and I feel like aiming for headshots is far easier. Uncharted games are cheap summer movies I'd never watch twice, Last of Us is a blu-ray you use as a coaster and watch every couple of years.
Troy Baker did fine, but I didn't care for his character that much. I think Uncharted 4 mechanically plays the best, looks phenomenal, and has the best story of them all rounding out a good finale. That said I didn't really love the game in comparison to the first and third Uncharted's. Yeah, Uncharted 2 is my least favorite I'd say (though I enjoyed it more going through them back-to-back in the remaster). I only went through Uncharted 4 once, and it's a game that I keep losing motivation to get through on impossible. It just kind of bores me honestly so the last time I played I stopped around the part where the 'twist' happens. I'd always much rather just play The Last of Us again, which outdid the Uncharted games to me. I am not that excited for The Lost Legacy (so much so that I didn't bother watching any E3 footage of it, but now that I say that I probably will...) but I know I'm going to play it regardless. Oh, and I played Golden Abyss the day Uncharted 4 came out, and I enjoyed that!
I think The Lost Legacy could be good, if it changes things up a bit. I don't know what that'd entail, though. I'm kinda with you on the second game, was good but forgettable for me beyond the review hype for it when it came out.
Can we talk about how this entire franchise is STILL in denial about the story contributions of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time to the series? This franchise has yet to have a game which addresses that godawful plot twist.
It's practically been fifteen years since Till the End of Time was released. It's time to talk about this canonically in the games.
Ugh, I'm personally still in denial of this. At one point I figured (hoped) I had made that part up in my head while dreaming. Actually, maybe this game felt like a cheap offline MMORPG because it is -that- canon? Any intelligent 'creator' has backups of his MMORPG universe thingy, right? Kotaku ran a story last month after it came to PS4, kind of validating it in the worst way.
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