Once this game is done, I’ll have finished all the main line games except for 11. I’m planning on just doin the main quest line until where ever that ends in the base game (I already have a level 20 something character from the trial). I’ve been playing 14 for ten years so I’ve already counted that one.
Just has been a personal goal of mine to complete all of them, and I’m finally close. It’s just funny it’s taken this long. I finished 4 back when it came out in the 90s as 2 here. I still have my ff2 and ff3 SNES carts in the other room here.
I have only played 7, 9, 12, 13 and 15. I reached around level 20-25 in FF 14, but that isn’t even halfway into base game, so not counting that. I dropped it because of the huge time sink it is.
As for older ones, while I don’t mind retro games, they feel a bit too retro. How would you say those older games are, if you don’t have any nostalgia for it?
6 is my favorite of the entire series so I might be too partial to it, but I do really feel like 6 is the their first big step into a somewhat modern/more mature storytelling. 4 also has a good story, but it’s still kinda tied into this idea of the main characters dealing with crystals and whatnot, and that never really resonated with me that much.
6, on the other hand, has a narrative beyond that. You don’t worry about silly crystals at all, and instead of some vague evil plaguing the world because the crystals got broken or out of alignment or whatever, you have real threats from a nation that’s using magitek technology, then later on even worse threats (and the best main antagonist of the series). I also think 6 has the most interesting characters, and even though there are a lot, almost all of them have interesting back stories you can explore. And many of those stories are tragic. You may have heard about suplexing the ghost train, but the story around the ghost train is heartbreaking. This is the first of the series where I cared about all these characters because they are written well.
It’s just a game that feels whole. Things that happen feel correct for the setting they have set up. 6 and Chrono Trigger are the absolute apex of 2D RPGs before the world jumped to 3D. And another big plus is that these games still look gorgeous because the sprites never get old unlike the boxy, ugly humanoid figures of 7.
As for the others, 1-5. They are alright. 4 is the most important of that group. It’s got a good story, though it’s not my favorite. I think the Pixel Remaster versions are pretty nice because you can set the xp gains to 4x, cutting out a TON of grinding in the older ones. And you can turn off random battles if you just want to get through a dungeon. I’ve played 2, 3, and now 5 this way. I think it’s neat to see how the series has evolved, but if you aren’t too worried about playing them yourself you could surely get by by watching some video synopses online. That said, with the 4x bump, I got through 2 and 3 each in about 10 hours. So not bad at all.
As for older ones, while I don’t mind retro games, they feel a bit too retro. How would you say those older games are, if you don’t have any nostalgia for it?
I’d say 5 and 6 are worth playing even without the nostalgia factor. The job system in 5 is really fun to play with and the plot is solid, and 6 is one of the classics everyone should play once.
As for the earlier games, they are surprisingly decent despite their age but I’d say they are best played as a history lesson to the genre.
Finnished Call of Cthulhu the past week, finally finished Prey this one (I’ve abandoned it for about a year), and between all of this I’m playing Baldur’s Gate 3. Now I want to play again the System Shock remake, I’m far in the game and I think I can finish it without much time.
I’m liking it a lot. I’ve never finished Bioshock, but I’ve played a few hours of it, so it may not be a fair comparison, but the environment feels bigger and more convoluted, everything is less linear. It’s more similar to Prey than Bioshock.
Also, the progression of the player is based on gadgets and weapons, there are no powers to level up by using points.
And with Baldur’s Gate I’m playing a thief which a master on almost every skill, but not the best in combat jajajaja.
That was the same for me, but reverse. I tried to play No Man's Sky to get hyped for Starfield, but they're just such different games doing different things and one doesn't appeal to me as much as the other.
What I find funny is so many people saying “starfield is so open but there’s nothing to do.” But for some reason, no man’s sky has “so much to do.” Every planet is basically completely barren or has one of the same four types of points of interest as every other planet
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed no man’s sky and starfield does have surprisingly barren places, but to say NMS has “more to do” is patently absurd.
Comparing them generally just reveals people’s preferences/loyalties as opposed to anything useful about either game.
I really don’t get it to be honest, I’m left saying “damn I can’t wait for the weekend to play starfield longer because there’s so much to do” I don’t have enough time to do what I want in any given weeknight. I’ve been absolutely obsessed with starfield…
I got the early release and had a 4 day weekend, my play time was measured in days by Tuesday…
Starfield has made me very disappointed with the planet designs in NMS, unfortunately. Like, a lot of it boils down to “This planet has purple dirt, but this other planet over here has blue dirt and is cold!” and they’re always one biome only. In Starfield, one planet can have several different biomes realistically spread out (like snow/ice region on the polar caps, etc.), and it also has a bigger pool of structures to pull from. I last played No Man’s Sky a year or so ago, and it always felt like there were only a handful of structures that could generate on a planet.
From some of the games you mentioned I think you’ll appreciate some of these games. All of them are the sort of games that have very rich stories that you will want to talk to people about, remember how you wanted to get your friend to play MGS blind just so you could see him face Psycho Mantis and have his mind blown and then you had someone to talk to about it? I had the same feeling for each of these games (which means I won’t tell you much about them, and you should try to avoid spoilers):
SOMA
Spec Ops: The Line
Life is Strange
I also think the Stanley Parable deserves an honorary spot it’s not exactly story rich but it’s a neat experience that I found quite unique.
NieR: Automata has the same effect for me. That game made me have some thoughts, I tell you what, that once-in-a-lifetime experience you wish you could erase your memory of to experience it for the first time again.
Seconded, though particularly the Royal version. The extra semester (and related content) and quality of life upgrades are completely worth it, and the best way to experience the game.
I love NMS but I’m so afraid to log in. I’ve had a huge underground base (max terrain manipulation) for like 5 years even though people say never to dig out a base because eventually it will get filled in. So I feel like I’m rolling the dice every time I load in. I have hours of videos of me just running around my base across the different patches, where the flora/fauna in the connected cave system changed each time.
The only thing that would really need to happen desperately to make it accessibly is to either have a fun and easy to digest primer or to make the language much more layman friendly to start and introduce technical or slang terms as you go.
“There is a sequence of N unsorted and unknown numbers. You can compare, whether any number is greater than any other one by specifying their positions in the sequence. You can swap two numbers, save copies of them on a stash, and replace any number in the sequence with stashed ones. Try to sort the sequence of unknown numbers with as little operations as possible.”
I know what this means, but I had to read it 6 times to get there. Though I think this wouldn’t be task 1.
I literally bought No Man’s Sky while waiting for Starfield. I’ve been playing No Man’s Sky for two weeks now and I just can’t put it down because it’s so good.
Now I’m planning to wait to buy Starfield for at least 6+ months until the developers iron out the bugs.
Trying to get to the center of the universe in Perma Death mode was one of the best gaming experiences I can remember. It took so much dedication and patience to finally get to the end (hit, play the main quests).
bin.pol.social
Aktywne