Lurker > HeroDelTiempo17

LeonhartFour posted...

I can't imagine how Margaret fans feel at all to become fans of Margaret

I would imagine horny, mostly

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I think that's what killed the game for me so much to the point where I dropped it is that I thought Johnny Silverhands was a big fucking loser, lol. He's like a parody of a cool dude who is meant to look be lame on purpose, but the game is acting like he's actually cool and it's wild to me.

I don't know if it was truly intentional but this exact dichotomy you're describing is what makes it work for me. Everything he says has a 50/50 shot of being right or full of shit. He's the type of dudebro asshole who would listen to Joe Rogan but occasionally get really mad at some shit that he says. It's great.

Keanu is in fact one of the best parts of the game and manages to carry some of the weaker parts of the story

Oh I did Nomad so I can't speak to the quality of the other intro paths. By prologue I mean there is a full narrative arc shared by all three origins that sets up the main plot and opens up the game fully. If you haven't met Keanu, you didn't finish it. That said, it's considered one of the high points of the game so if you're already losing interest during it, not a good sign. (Personally I rank a bunch of other moments a lot higher than the intro, but there's a general consensus and it does have some pretty slick sequences so it's a good barometer)

JackMan posted...

My biggest complaint was probably how dark everything was indoors. So many lights everywhere, but I still had to squint to see who I was shooting at.

The lighting in this game is weird, even with RTX on PC it bugs out sometimes indoors (notably in vehicles). Can't imagine what it's like on consoles. Depending on your setup you might have to fiddle with your brightness, in-game lighting settings, or the HDR on your display.

JackMan posted...

Played four hours of the free trial. Does it just start bad or does it get better?

Honestly depends on what you mean. If you got through the prologue story and didn't like it, it's definitely not for you.

If you weren't doing story and were instead fucking around with the crappy 0-plot side gigs, no, those pretty much suck all the way through. All of the game's meat is in the larger quests.

The PC version still has plenty of bugs and jank design as of a few months ago so I wouldn't hold your breath. It's just that increasing the performance smooths some things over.

I don't think this game is ever going to be "fixed" - it might get bigger updates with DLC though.

Ok after watching this I still had to Google to check that it wasn't fake. I am dumbstruck by this entire thing.

Also: how the fuck did they not give the best Rescue Ranger, Gadget, any focus in the trailer? Is Disney suddenly scared of the furry demographic?

Mac Arrowny posted...

Teddie is the most sexist character in the series

Which is saying something for Persona!

Now this baffles me. Teddie is flirtatious and has some goofy notions of chivalry but if that's your angle, I can think of several characters in Persona 4 ALONE that are much worse.

What do people even dislike about Teddie? Is there something about the actual character or do people just find his voice and bear puns annoying?

He's a mascot character having an existential crisis about being a mascot character. He's great.

Barbie and it's not close. The reason is simple - she's actually a technical expert in each of her fields while Mario engages in bullshit fantasy versions of professions and Homer is a screwup at many of his odd jobs.

For some reason the goofy inexplicable shit like the wacky waving inflatable arm men gives me SCP vibes

It's Junpei but I am pleased to see the Ryuji appreciation. He is definitely a dumbass but not a malicious one. Yosuke is the only person here who isn't a dumbass, but instead he's an utterly self-absorbed jerk.

Bad and clunky on purpose is true but probably an oversimplification. The design ethos in play is starting from the base of the first PSX controllers did not have control sticks and trying to make it work from there. Given that it's remarkable how well it works and the clever tricks used to do light vs strong attacks and stuff like that but uh. Still wish I had a stick!

I voted Octillery but it really is just an octopus. He's just such a friend tho

The naming also helps. Also Octazooka. Good theming.

It's just the first two bosses I think? I only played it up to Cleric Beast. I had a blast but idk if I want to suffer trying to fight Pappy G who I am already bad enough at in the actual game. It is good though!

It's more interesting as a thought experiment than it is fun as a game, however. Like, it is still fun, but. It is less "porting Bloodborne 1:1 to the PSX" and more "imagining a version of Bloodborne from the PSX era of game design." For example, there's no analogue stick support! All the controls and mechanics are built around this. The maps have transitions and loading screens and the level design is different in places. Trick weapons aren't seamless and have to be switched from the menu - this is my biggest complaint. So you do have to be prepared to struggle with controls that are clunky on purpose.

It's very cool, definitely has a unique vibe. The developer put a ton of very impressive work into it. Definitely check it out, but it's something people should check expectations of going in.

Even as a hater I will say the party members outside of the initial 3 in XB2 do slap. Although outside of Morag that comes with some reservations! (Chapter 3) I am still salty they kill off Vandheim immediately to raise the stakes, which I guess shows it's effective at doing so but feels cheap. It's a lame version of a narrative move done better elsewhere, even in its own series! As for the other one, I can see that character being polarizing but it was my kind of stupid in a game already full of dumb stuff.
By the time I quit I was starting to come around on Nia as well, but it took forever.

Honestly my biggest complaint about Xenoblade is that it REALLY does not respect the player's time in ways that go above and beyond even for a JRPG, and while XB1 was worth the investment I just could not suffer though all the junk XCX and XB2 want you to put up with.

I WANT to get excited for XB3 but I'm a cranky old man who even has trouble finishing JRPGs that I love, and I just can't trust this series. It sucks!

KCF0107 posted...

That being said, I believe that the Wolf Among Us 2 is a split development. The gameplay related stuff will be done by Telltale but the actual story will be crafted by a studio made of former old Telltale employees.

Okay, interesting. That gives me some faith in this.

KCF0107 posted...

The old Telltale Games is gone. A different company purchased many of Telltale's assets/IP rights and were able to rebrand themselves as Telltale Games.

Yeah this is what makes me feel weird about it. I loved Tales from the Borderlands and TWAU and the first two TWD seasons and that studio is just gone. This is basically a reboot by a different team.

Paratroopa1 posted...

People always bring up WW/TP and XCX but I'm gonna miss NintendoLand and Game & Wario :(

The Luigi's Mansion NintendoLand game was so cool. Lots of cool asymmetric gameplay potential obliterated by the death of couch multiplayer.

Which I guess you can still do digitally, it's just not as exciting.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Never forget that Raven is 35 in Vesperia.

He has a dozen or so lines about his old bones creaking.

I mean the joke here is that he died years ago and his body is being held together with duct tape and blastia which is good actually

Also I am 29 and my old bones do creak so he's actually extremely realistic

Not only did I drop XB2 because it's not nearly as good as the first one, but I simply did not care about leveling each blade and just focused on the ones I actively used while exiling the rest to the idle game missions.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I gotta say the only side content issue I'm having so far is that I don't know how easy it's going to be to track this affinity stuff. There's no indication on the map screen or main screen as to whether you've even talked to an NPC before or not.

It is totally obnoxious and opaque, at least in the original Wii version. I can only hope they improved that. I only bothered raising affinity for an area or two that had pretty significant rewards for doing so (two optional Monado arts), and even then I would hesitate to say it's even worth bothering with that.

The thing about the "quests auto-complete so it's fine" excuse is that it downplays the sheer amount of busywork sidequests in the game. It's great QOL when you get to auto-complete sidequests doing things you would already do in the course of the main story, but eventually you pass that point and there are still so many sidequests to do. Especially when you factor in area affinity on top of it, it's an enormous pain.

I don't really hold it against the game, but I do have friends that have written the game off because they can't see sidequests and not complete all of them. And they'll put up with some shit - one of my friends completes the checklist in every Yakuza game. So I think when you include a bunch of stuff that in theory should cater to completionists, and then completionists think it sucks so much they won't play the game, then you have done some bad game design.

I'm assuming DiMaggio is holding out for more money or this is a publicity stunt so that they can announce he's onboard later and get another round of marketing, it is so astronomically unlikely to me they go forward without him.

Yeah I hate to say it but it's very frequently a mistake to get anything multiplat on Switch. So much stuff runs like garbage on it. Even exclusives like SMTV!

Mythra is in it though so you still get a healthy dose of anime titty

Leonhart4 posted...

I feel like V is either first or last so there's less variation with it.

I would describe that quality as extremely volatile!

It's commonly polarizing but because of how MGS fans are split on the aspects of the series they like so much, it's not weird to see it in the middle.

Metal Gear Solid sits at a very comfortable ratio for low amount of entries but high amount of variation. You can probably find people championing each of the 5 main games except maybe MGS4.

mgsmind

KingButz posted...

I can't believe anyone thinks the voice acting in MGS is good. I mean unless you think silly overacting is good like in an ironic way.

MGS voice acting matches the tone of the series! That's not overacting, that's acting appropriately.

also re: Zelda 2 being a Metroidvania

Guess what game Iga based Symphony of the Night on!

Seanchan posted...

For Souls-likes, the question is "is it kinda hard and/or have a corpse run"? If yes, people consider it a Souls-like.

This makes Shovel Knight a Souls-like.

It's a vague descriptor, but there's more to it than that!

I cannot believe this Snom slander

Mr. Rime is so good. I think I would flip/flop on this between him and Gardevoir but today is a clown charlie chaplin kind of day.

Actually yeah I definitely remember arguments about this with Fusion and Prime 3. All of Prime really because FPS, but specifically Prime 3 due to its structure.

Nanis23 posted...

I am tired of the term "Metroidvania" used for every 2D platformer with a hub world. Search-Action as a genre with "Metroidvania" as a sub-genre can work
When I think of "Metroidvania" I think of a game with small corridors, bosses that give you powerups, teleport rooms, save rooms, etc
Mega Man ZX is considered a Metroidvania just because it has a hub world but some levels are literal "go right to win" on a flat surface

okay now I'm confused

1) how the fuck would metroidvania be a search action subgenre, what is the distinguishing factor here
2) MMZX has small corridors, bosses that give powerups, teleport rooms, and save rooms lmao

I mean I agree that MMZX's map design is not up to the standards of the genre, but it has literally every other arbitrary factor you listed.

Also implies that you can disqualify a game from the genre if its map is bad enough, which is kind of funny. MMZX is a weird example because I literally do not know if they were even trying. But did any madman argue that like, Metroid Dread was not a Metroidvania because it's too linear or something?

NFUN posted...

It's not a Roguelike

is it a Rogueis?

Souls-like is about an aesthetic as much or more than it is design elements, compared to Metroidvanias which tend to get grouped due to how they treat the map and progression. See Hollow Knight and Blasphemous which are considered both Soulslikes and Metroidvanias. It's a fine term, you can't really come up with a better one because it's so nebulous in the first place.

ok so yacht club announced THEIR cool zelda inspired game this week but it's not out until 2023 so might as well play this one in the meantime

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Most of the biggest first party Nintendo releases of the last several years required major aid from 3rd party companies. If it weren't for Mario Odyssey I wouldn't have much confidence that they had the ability to go all out on AAA title by themselves anymore.

Unless Odyssey had some major outside help as well that I'm unaware of.

Right, so you can see how comparing these to Arceus, a game with a shorter development time by a smaller team that did not have major 3rd party aid, is a little lopsided?

I won't say it's unfair - this is something they should be doing but aren't for whatever reason, and I want to know why not! But it's just a very different scenario.

JackMan posted...

Im sure Nintendo are thrilled. Again, Im just saying it would be nice if GF could make games with the same quality as most of the rest of Nintendo. I dont understand whats so controversial about that.

It's not controversial? You're talking about subjective quality here which is fine, I was just pointing out that if you were talking about differences in the standard of quality between the two companies, obviously what GameFreak is doing is good enough for Nintendo.

It's not like all Nintendo games are winners either, this is clearly within their acceptable range.

I mean fuck we all saw the N64 emulation thing, right? Nintendo isn't exactly setting the bar high anymore.

JackMan posted...

I know why they dont. Im saying it would be nice if they did. The rest of Nintendo generally seems to give a damn about the quality of their games, so its a shame Gamefreak dont seem to have the same standards.

Do you think Nintendo is unhappy that GF releases a top 10 Switch bestseller just about once per year? There's gotta be zero chance that GameFreak isn't meeting Nintendo's arbitrary standards of quality. What would stop them from helping out?

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I just can't understand the mindset of "yeah I know the games look like crap because they know it doesn't matter, and I'm fine with that".

People have to hold developers to some kind of fucking standard.

The thing is they are being held to a standard and it's different from yours. It's the one that gets set when the primary audience is children and GameFreak is pumping games out constantly.

Yeah BDSP isn't going to be the thing leeching dev resources - the Sword and Shield DLC, and possibly the next "mainline" Pokemon game are.

The Call of Duty and Madden comparison is pretty apt. Pokemon is very close to a yearly franchise. This game was probably made in 2-3 years? Breath of the Wild took 5, the sequel is taking another 5. No one wants to wait half a decade for a god damn Pokemon game.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

It's not like it's actually affecting my enjoyment, it just frustrates me when people go full on "this is fine", because it's never going to get any better if you don't care that it looks bad. If they aren't willing to pull out the stops for a full upheavel of the franchise, when will they?

I think this is the main thing - I don't think Gamefreak/Nintendo/TPC want to! When you look at how these games get made, I don't think this is as simple as a lack of budget. They have access to it. Gamefreak lacks experience making 3D console games and has always just undergone trial by fire whenever they have to learn a new console. Improving the quality would take either years of additional dev time or outsourcing more assets than they currently do to more experienced studios (paying out more). When they can put out games this fast, still sell this much, and keep the profits mostly in-house...why would they ever change?

This isn't really a defense it's just...I think the hardcore audience and the casual audience GameFreak is very good at targeting are just completely out of step. Sword and Shield and now Arceus got a lot of praise for their design advancements despite having a more mixed reception with the hardcore crowd.

Reminder that the red dots on Armaldo are not its eyes

well since the topic opened with things that are not traditional iterative time loops but deal with them thematically, I guess I'll be that person: Homestuck

Similarly, Undertale essentially uses time loops to describe how players interact with the game world. Flowey's backstory is very much a sociopathic Groundhog Day

Others have covered things I like and given me some good recs but shoutouts to Outer Wilds, GOAT game

I don't dislike the laughing scene because it's earnest, or because it's poorly acted or anything. You can understand and even agree with the point it's making and still think it's bad! People don't act like this! Being awkward on purpose is still awkward!

I'm not gonna sit here and claim I can think of a better way they could have portrayed the specific emotion of "hollow laughter to cope with overwhelming existential dread" but man do I not like this one.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Except for Lulu who's outfit doesn't make sense from any perspective whatsoever inside universe or out, and clearly was just Nomura drawing his personal fetish or something.

And Lulu has the most iconic character design in the game, second maybe to Auron, so it worked!

Nomura has outright admitted that around this time he was putting even more belts and zippers on characters out of spite to people making fun of him for it, too.

I love all these little doofuses but Anorith holds a special place in my heart for being such a goofball design based on a deep cut fossil. Glad to see I am not the only Anorith appreciator today.

LordoftheMorons posted...

I thought the XIV team had downplayed the possibility of Blitzball whenever asked about it?

Not exactly - they've talked about wanting to do it repeatedly for years, but have issues with implementation. So the downplaying is more like "do not get your hopes up for FFX-style Blitzball" but they were trying to come up with other options. I think they floated something like "Blitzball Manager" instead but then there's the other issue of will people even want it if they change too much, so who knows.

KamikazePotato posted...

FFX has too much early 2000s jankiness for that. Lots of awkward pauses, canned animations, and weird camera directing at times. Still great but not quite up to modern standards.

Yeah, I find it weird. FFX has some great presentation even as someone who doesn't care too much for the plot and characters, but it's 20 years old! I feel like part of why FFX still carries this reputation is that I can't think of many other JRPGs that go for the same level of ultra-cinematic storytelling that Square-Enix does. And later FF games have...issues.

I think I'd say the modern JRPG benchmark is Yakuza. Even if you don't count the earlier ones as action RPGs, Y7 exists.