That just means you're playing a bad JRPG.
Even then I'd rather a game have grinding than loot boxes. Grinding is just annoying and boring, loot boxes is having executives' fingers in your pockets.
Your video game hot take(s) thread
- Thread starter Dany_the_penguin
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Even then I'd rather a game have grinding than loot boxes. Grinding is just annoying and boring, loot boxes is having executives' fingers in your pockets.
Yep, I never got the point of JRPGs. Even when I was a kid playing FF3 on SNES (technically FF6), I was like what's the point in leveling up and doing more damage when the enemies just get stronger with me? The gameplay is not changing at all. And then it's just a slog to get through with all the combat that isn't very engaging. JRPGs are like an old-school adventure game that also just throws in a lame battle that you have to beat every 5 steps you take.
Well... ok. But the "Tales of..." series is considered one of the better ones. So is the consensus wrong?
I wouldn't know - I played Tales of Arise for about an hour and then my eyes became too offended by the anime overdesign. But I can just point you to Persona 5 for a JRPG that has virtually zero grinding.
Depends on the game. On occasion they'll have an average or mediocre game. The rest is YMMV.
There's gonna be a remake? Huh. M'kay. I hated he first one. Don't know why I even bothered with the second one, but I actually enjoyed a bit. That made me get 3 when the Xbox One launched, and I had a fucking blast. I feel they finally focused on making a FUN game and not one that focused on gimmicks and frustrating restrictions.
That said, I've no interest in a remake of the first game if it's just going to be a prettier version of the original. I'll pop DR3 back in if I want an actually FUN zombie fix.
I tried P5 and after a banging intro it was walking around, lame talking and boring turn-based combat. I lost patience before the always-tedious beginnings of such games gave way to any interesting parts. Maybe some day I'll give it another shot.
Whaaat? The first 2 were awesome! Just pure goofy fun.
There are a number of other good JRPGs that don't feature much grind or random encounters, but if you don't like walking around talking to people or turn based combat I question what you are even looking for in the genre. It's like playing an FPS and complaining that all you do is shoot guys in the face and pick up items.
So is Deadrising 3. D1 has the shitty time limit and really bad ally-NPC AI. D2 is better and more lenient, thus more fun. D3 is even better, because it's even more lenient with the time limit, and let's the player actually go nuts with enough to finish everything in the story and get the true ending. Also, D1 nor D2 have Ultra Dead Rising 3.
I love the time limit, the game would be boring without it. Herding the NPCs really wasn't bad once you got used to it. The challenge is part of what makes it fun. The biggest problem with DR1 is that the story invalidates all your hard work rescuing everybody. That's the big misstep. I don't actually remember if the second game did something similar or had a better ending for rescuing everybody or not.
More power to you, but thank you. I'm here to kill zombies in over the top ways. Not babysit survivors 24/7. Dead Rising 3 most of the AI survivors tougher and competent. Yet that game is challenging for the right reasons.
Last I heard DR2 had a better ending for rescuing everyone compared to DR1.
To be fair, DR1 came out right at the cusp of HD being the standard, and I was playing on a tube TV; I couldn't read the on-screen text because it was so small. Then the game had that godawful time limit and an over-abundance of frustrating follow/babysit quests, ugh... DR3 just let you have fun killing zombies which was perfect for a new generation of consoles flexing their muscles (which was what DR1 was for the 360,) just DR3 got it right.
Sure that's fair, and I do not normally play jRPGs. But I got into the FF7 remakes, which have action in the combat- as does Tales of Arise!- so I became more amenable. But of course it's still a genre I keep at arms' length.
Anyway, this morning I started and quite Little Nightmares 2 because it is a PS+ game.
My general sentiment with these "walk to the right" games is that they are fun to look at but not to play. Limbo, Inside, and the first Little Nightmares- gorgeous, spooky, beautiful- and boring and frustrating.
After I finished the first Nightmares I was in love with the vibes and the art and theme but decided one was enough and had no interest in more. Well, certainly not paying for any more. But hey the sequel is "free" and I had a morning to kill...
Well I remembered why I don't like to play these games- you have to sneak or run past things and when you mess up you start over, and succeeding means figuring out the awkward and inconsistent timing. The game prioritizes visuals and art but that often runs counter to gameplay mechanics. The area I quit on was sneaking past a monster-teacher. I understood the route immediately- through a vent, behind her desk as she walks arounds the room, staying out of her line of sight, past the shelves, and out the "front" (side of the screen). But I can't tell what her "line of sight" is because it's all 3D and the camera centered on my character, so it's this dumb guessing game.
And I just didn't feel like trying over and over again to get it right. Earlier there was a section running from cover to cover while getting shot at and I just did the same thing like 10 times until I got it pixel perfect and... ugh. That kind of gameplay is just NOT fun at all.
PC players want Astro Bot. I won't buy a PS5 and want to play it on my computer as well. (Before this, Astro's Playroom was the only PS5 game that interested me.) But it should stay exclusive. They should look at the small but worthwhile success of the game and make more like it. Diversify their portfolio with smaller games that can afford to stay exclusive again, so that even if a game doesn't sell well, it adds to a variety of games that players still want to buy the useless machine with expensive online access and overpriced junk controllers for.
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Putting everything on PC is just making the console irrelevant to too many people, a problem that will become worse as the years pass. Having to push a console drives the second parties and in-house studios to make better games with the backing of the company. I enjoyed The Last Guardian for all its faults and doubt that a third party like Capcom or Konami would have supported its development for that long. They'd have rushed it out the door or cancelled it. I miss Team Ico and the rest of Japan Studio. They didn't have so many big successes. They struggled in the PS3 generation and, sadly, had been underfunded for years before the closure. But having smaller teams and lower budgets allowed them to make different kinds of games without taking on so much of the risk that the 200 million dollar slop is so averse to. Again, exclusivity can drive quality. Sega became less productive and much more boring after they went third party. I know that what I'm talking about is a pipe dream for the time being. Publishers are still far too invested in the huge projects that take eight years to make (and I realize the irony of mentioning The Last Guardian, whose prolonged development hell was an outlier for Japan Studio).
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Putting everything on PC is just making the console irrelevant to too many people, a problem that will become worse as the years pass. Having to push a console drives the second parties and in-house studios to make better games with the backing of the company. I enjoyed The Last Guardian for all its faults and doubt that a third party like Capcom or Konami would have supported its development for that long. They'd have rushed it out the door or cancelled it. I miss Team Ico and the rest of Japan Studio. They didn't have so many big successes. They struggled in the PS3 generation and, sadly, had been underfunded for years before the closure. But having smaller teams and lower budgets allowed them to make different kinds of games without taking on so much of the risk that the 200 million dollar slop is so averse to. Again, exclusivity can drive quality. Sega became less productive and much more boring after they went third party. I know that what I'm talking about is a pipe dream for the time being. Publishers are still far too invested in the huge projects that take eight years to make (and I realize the irony of mentioning The Last Guardian, whose prolonged development hell was an outlier for Japan Studio).
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I am genuinely confused, after how Sony (and Nintendo) completely dominated the last generation of gaming through the power of their exclusives, that people today doubt this statement. Everyone is so anti-exclusives now. I get the sentiment, but it's baffling to me that people don't get that if certain games weren't exclusive, then we wouldn't have gotten to play them at all.
That said, I do think a PC port a year or two after the game launches should be the standard. There's no need to forever exile games to a certain generation of console.
Let's pretend that the PS5 has a nice variety of exclusive games. If we only have to wait two years, we're still not gonna buy the 500 dollar console. I don't know how many people I'm speaking for, but the number will grow as more games go to PC.
I don't think exclusives would ever really convince a person with a decent enough PC to buy a console. At least, on a scale that matters. But some kid who's old enough to understand the difference between mobile games and something like Astro Bot? Or a 30-something who hasn't played video games since he was a teenager? Those are the people exclusives are trying to get to buy specific consoles.
But going back to the idea of a PC player buying a PS5 just for an exclusive. Frankly, I think the people who would buy a PS5 despite already having a PC are the kind who have the personality (and money) to not wait two years for a port. But I do live in a developing country, so the thought of buying more than one gaming machine is already scandalous to me. Something that only the extra wealthy have the privilege to do.
Not everyone is anti-exclusive, but you have a vocal minority of butt-fucks who live their lives on social media and the Internet. Remember, the Internet doesn't represent all of life. Besides, this is nothing new. There always that set of console fans who get upset and insecure when their purchases on the $300-$500+ feel invalidated (or when their parents/guardian bought these consoles for them), because the competition has a better or much more well known exclusive. Or the games in question are no longer exclusive and appeared on other consoles. Like with GTA III. There were some smug PS2 fan boys acting like arrogant assholes, because XBOX didn't have GTA at the time. When GTA III and later Vice City got ported to XBOX, they all acted like spoiled brats and bitches.
Don't even get me started when FFXIII, DMC4, and RE5 were no longer PS3 exclusives and appeared on the 360 for same day release. With RE5 and DMC4 later getting PC ports. I still the remember the shitstorm PlayStation fan boys threw out and they double downed on their hatred for all of three of these games in certain regards. Didn't stop of any of these three from performing great and selling great.
I've said before and I will say it again: Sony are ungrateful bastards to Team Ico and JAPAN Studio. Especially towards the latter. JS had done so much for Sony, even on projects where they weren't the major programmers on and it was a different in-house development team. Sony shuts them down in place of overly expensive cinematic games (a genre I mostly don't have a problem with) and for their shitty live-service games that are all failing and cancelled. As we've seen and as even Max and the YoVidoeGames crew discussed last night, the execs at Sony are super out of touch with game development and what gamers/audiences actually want! Not enough original IPs my ass. The Astro Playroom and Astro Bot games pretty much show how full shit these execitives actually are, and shouldn't even be in the life changing decisions.
At least Sega is still active and makes games. Or at the very least, outsources their older IPs they've done nothing with and lets other studios take a crack at them. As we've seen, it's working out for them. Streets of Rage 4 did great beyond expectations for Sega, and I am expecting the same for Shinobi and most of the other greenlit projects.
What the heck is with Fox on the cover of Super Smash Bros. 64? Everyone else looks fine but he looks like a kangaroo!
