Welcome to AAA game reviews. Where every major studios games must receive a high score, or they won’t get review copies for the next game from that studio. With rare exceptions.
Exactly. I consider it basically payola these days. Every big-name review is gushing, falling over itself to expound on the innumerable virtues of every AAA release, and then once normal folks have played for a few weeks, the real story comes out. My partner played the demo and was shocked to be playing the same game as the one that was reviewed. Unless I’m so excited to play a game that I don’t care if it’s mediocre, I wait to buy until actual the real user reviews trickle out post-release.
This. The reviews never seem to add up for the FF series. I thought the same thing about 15. Not sure who all these mega fans are nowadays, but it’s not those of us were playing FF2 on snes back in the day and whatnot. I’ve wondered about review manipulation on Square Enix’s part though I could just be majorly out of touch. It is possible that people genuinely are seeing something there that I’m not.
I don’t know if I count as a mega fan, but I’ve been playing the FF series since FF1 on the NES. I loved FF1-FF9, but then I sort of lost interest in the series. I kept trying each new game, but they never really clicked for me.
Then I tried FFXV when it came out, and while it was a big departure from what the series was before, I loved it. It wasn’t perfect, but it finally clicked again for me. Same with FF7 Remake. I haven’t played FF16 yet, and I won’t until it comes out on PC, but I have a feeling I’ll like it.
I guess my point is, there are plenty of long time fans that are into the new games. And plenty that aren’t! I think the new direction is pretty polarizing.
@catfishman I'm a long time fan (6 & 7 my favorites, I know not very unique opinion) and have no interested into the newer games. From the reviews, looks like 16 is not for me (as 15 wasn't). Did you play 12? That is a very traditional Final Fantasy.
I played it a little bit of FF12, but I may not have given it enough of a chance. I remember losing interest when I had to set up all of the gambits for my party.
I wrote a longer reply on someone else’s comment. Mostly, I’ve been a fan since I was a kid and I’m less thrilled with the creativity, heart, innovation and originality in the series as of late. Tho, as you get older I suppose lots of things start seeming less exciting haha
It’s kind of a long standing quality of the series, since they are always trying new stuff that will resonate with different people. Outside of like actual FF2 (I assume you are talking about IV since you mention the SNES) I think I have heard people make a case for every FF being their favourite. Which is great, I am glad they try to shake it up every time.
Both of the projects Yoshida has been involved with I have been pretty lukewarm on though, so I am just a bit concerned if he is going to be the proverbial face of the series moving forward.
Yes, that was a ref to the weird choice to brand 4 as two in the US. Which I as a kid only later learned was what has happened
I can believe it. I’ve kinda figured I might just be settling into old person syndrome and thinking everything from my younger days was somehow better. I loved the series changing styles, vibes, characters, stories, worlds, etc., while some themes and elements remained the same. Nowadays tho, little changes and the stories and characters seems less and less compelling.
The thing with Yoshida is interesting because I feel exactly the same way, but I also changed opinion on his works over time.
I don’t know what changed, but Heavensward era FFXIV was pretty cool in both gameplay and story, and Stormblood too has some great moments (primarily in the 4.X patch quests) while being even better, gameplay wise.
Since then the gameplay has been going in a direction I really don’t care for, and the same goes for story (though Shadowbringers had some great moments). I couldn’t make myself finish Endwalker.
I’m curious if you experienced this shift as well or you just didn’t care for FFXIV from the outset.
I wasn’t a massive XIV fan at the outset, but there has definitely been a trend in the game design I didn’t like as it moved towards later expansions. They continually moved away from any kind of player agency/customization, so everything is super homogenized now (or at least when I last played). I stopped around the end of Shadowbringers, never actually got into Endwalker content.
They used to have cross-class skills and things like that, so it really felt like a FF job system where you would play different classes to unlock skills for your main. I think any FF player should be pretty comfortable with that. They have since simplified that, which I am sure is great for newer players but I don’t really like it. Now, if I am a level 80 warrior I am exactly the same as every other level 80 warrior, except for the number next to my item level. That kind of customization is a big part of both MMOs and FFs for me, usually.
They have definitely gone further down the path of homogenisation and simplification. I don’t actually mind customisation being sacrificed for better encounter balance, but many classes started to lose their identities as features and mechanics got scaled back, Dark Knight and Astrologian being two examples. And of course what they did to healers in general. Personally the removal of Hissatsu: Kaiten from Samurai was the last straw.
Killer soundtrack though, Soken does good work.
He does produce some bangers, but I’m such an unabashed Uematsu fanboy. I actually felt Soken did some of his best work remixing, building on and riffing off of Uematu’s themes and melodies, which is another reason I enjoyed the earlier expansions.
Ff16 is the first final fantasy game I’ve played (so I can’t compare to the others like you can) and at first I felt like this but now that I’m 17 hours in, I get it. It’s just how this game is, it’s not open world. Each area is it’s own thing that you take in.
Games are like an interactive movie and there’s a ratio of moviness to gaminess and this one leans heavier on the moviness side.
Yeah. I get it. I’m not really even thinking about it as a Final Fantasy game with a lot of this. My callbacks to FFXIV are because that’s an MMO and we expect the concessions in MMOs to repetitive animations and lower tier graphics to allow for the content churn. For a new game to just look and feel like a 10 year old MMO with graphics is kinda rough.
This game feels like they meant to have a ton more and just didn’t in the end. Not every game needs an open world but if I do compare it to other FF games, it definitely feels the least open.
I have felt some of the boss fights were really good. I guess I would have just given it a 5 or 6.
I think I’m mostly upset by how much acclaim it’s been getting.
I def get what you mean, it isn’t very fleshed out compared to other games that are in the same (apparent) league that the reviews are putting it in. I was just playing a little bit ago and did another of the side quests where you deliver food to people and it’s just so simple seeming (and repetitive since it happens more than once). But in a way I also like the simpleness of it. Maybe it’s appeasing to a certain part of the brain in people where it either clicks or it doesn’t and that is what is responsible for the reviews.
Games are like an interactive movie and there’s a ratio of moviness to gaminess and this one leans heavier on the moviness side.
The last Final Fantasy game I played was 8, and it was exactly because of this. They stripped out almost all the “game” bits (although they did give us a really cool card game minigame) and turned it into basically a movie you could occasionally interact with. The battles were mindless (there was no reason not to use your strongest summon every round, because it was both more effective than anything else and because it was totally free to do so), the “equipment” system was entirely optional (which was good, because interacting with it required mega-grind), and overland travel was a total afterthought. It was more of a “game” than anything Tell Tale put out, but that’s a low bar, since Tell Tale only produces movies that sometimes throw in an attention check in the form of a quicktime event.
It was a real shame, because I had entirely switched system allegiance from Nintendo to Playstation just for FF7. Then the followed it up with 8, and it was obvious where they were taking the franchise. So I’m not surprised to see, all these years later, that the newest FF game is even more of that.
Two Worlds 2 had a very interesting idea for a magic system where you find cards and slot them to create and modify spells. It's pretty jank but maybe worth a look. The game also had one of the most interesting multiplayer setups for open world rpgs I've ever seen.
1 - Get Recalbox on a GPi Case 2 and you’ll have access to just about every system from before 2000 (including support for commodore and other similar systems). It can handle PSP games as well, but not PS2 or NDS. There are other cases available for a raspberry pi system, but I recommend the GPi Case 2 because you can play it “docked” and handheld. I recommend Recalbox since it already has a lot of support for the GPi case built into it, but if you’re tech-savvy you may prefer Lakka for its flexibility. You may be able to get more modern emulators to run on the lakka as well.
2 - Gaming PC with Lakka, Citra, or whatever other emulators you’d like. And unless you’re playing a lot of super new games, you don’t need anything fancy- you could probably just throw windows 7 on a $100 refurbished business PC and run just about any game from 2010 or earlier, TBH.
3 - Wii or Wii U. I personally find emulation of these (specifically with a wii-mote) to be a bit finicky. If you don’t use a Wii, you can substitute your personal console of choice for this one.
4 - Oculus Quest- though I’m not sure if it counts since you aren’t connecting to a TV. This isn’t the best VR headset but it is the cheapest. It has a good library of standalone games, and for anything else you can use airlink or the virtual desktop to run games off of a VR-ready PC (If you went with one that was beefy for #2). The quest has a lot of modding support through the sidequest. The main concern with this is that you need a phone to set up a Quest when you buy it/after a factory reset. So if Facebook goes under or a meteor hits silicon valley, this could conceivably turn into a fancy paperweight. To my knowledge, nobody has cracked the Quest to skip over this step. If historical preservation is more important to you than money, I would recommend choosing literally any other VR headset because of the setup thing.
Apart from being a sidescroller, it sounds like you might really like Noita.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 also has incredible magic co.bat, but that’s top-down, turnbased tactics.
Or maybe Psychonauts? Not a wizard, but an assortment of ESP powers gained at a summer camp like boy scout badges as you go through the game. 3d platformer. But the powers and their variety are really fun.
And there’s Witcher 3, which is 3rd person. But it’s close 3rd person at least? Might not run on your machine though. Maybe the 1st game might? Though it has its flaws.
For first person… Hmm. A surprisingly tough call. Most of the 1st person games I know have really straightforward battle magic, the wizard game included. Which is kinda weird now I think about it.
The Dishonored games? If you’re okay with steampunk setting (very well done steampunk though!) 1st person immersive sims. Stealth or kill everyone however you like with a nice assortment of magic powers. I’d put this on top of the list honestly. It’s old and stylized enough it might run alright.
Prey, like dishonored, also allows you to learn (optional) magic powers and use them in a variety of situations, but it’s also set in space, if that’s a dealbreaker. 1st person though!
Or the Persona games? It’s not strictly speaking classic wizardry, but it’s definitely magic of a sort, and I think it should run on most anything, especially Persona 4 Golden. But the fights are turn-based strategy. And 3rd person. Goddamn.
Legend of Grimrock? It’s an odd duck, and you learn magic slowly, but maybe it’s the right odd duck for you? First person, real time but you and enemies only move along a grid, old-style dungeon crawler.
I’ve played Noita. It’s fun but not exactly what I’m looking for.
Divinity isn’t a magic game I’m looking for, but it is an RPG I want to play at some point, I’ve only heard good things about it.
With Psychonauts, I’ve heard of it as a cult classic that every True Gamer™ has to play, but I’m not really into platformers.
AFAIK Witcher’s combat isn’t really about magic, it’s an RPG with some magical abilities that help you win swordfights, which is not what I want to play at the moment. It’s a maybe, but I think there are better fits.
Legend of Grimrock 2 looks very interesting, it looks like the RPGs that were made before I was born and I wanted to play one for a while. A game in that style that can run on modern PC? Sign me up!
I have conflicted feelings about Persona. I’ve never played one, I haven’t even seen the gameplay. From what I know of the gameplay it’s unique and interesting to me. Visual style looks cool. But I also know that some of the story and character decisions made by the devs are really weird even by Japan weirdness standards, and very weird to me personally. Considering that the story and characters are the main part of that game, I would rather wait for the next one, and hopefully they’ll stop doing that weird stuff and fix it.
I’m playing both Prey and Dishonored 2 right now. I really like them both, which makes me think that the game I want is an immersive sim with extensive magic system. Given that an immersive sim is a rare genre, I don’t think a game like that exists. Still, thank you for all your suggestions.
Can confirm, Grimrock 1 and 2 are super tight. Extremely true to their inspiration while modernizing basically everything. Slower, Not a slog. Tough, Not cruel.
The Ally is what you’d want. Laptops aren’t really all that portable if portability is the goal. The Deck would be better from a “pick up and play” perspective but if you use Game Pass it’d be worth it to pick up the Ally instead, obviously.
Have you considered Enderal? It’s a total conversion mod for Skyrim on steam, so the bones of it are the simpler Skyrim systems- but it overhauls everything and has excellent world building and quests to boot. A full mage playthrough/build is very fun/rewarding. Just understand that it is NOT Skyrim. It looks like it sometimes, and there’s definitely still that Bethesda jank, but it’s its own beast.
I wanted to avoid mods for now especially with skyrim since last time I’ve tried I’ve spent like 3 hours straight on nexusmods, only to run into conflicts and be too tired to even attempt to fix them. Although with a total conversion I assume it’s all-in-one which should help avoid that problem. Thank you, will check it out!
If you have the steam version of Skyrim it's very simple to get running. https://store.steampowered.com/developer/SureAI/#browse has both versions (depending on if you have the launch version or special/anniversary edition). Also found here is Nehrim, their total conversion mod for Oblivion
I think part of the problem last time was that some of my mods were nexus and some were steam 😃 I guess I’m reinstalling Skyrim then. Thank you for the link!
Yes, the total conversion package makes it self-contained in the steam library/store. It just checks that you own a legit copy of Skyrim to run it. It has its own steam page even, couldn’t be easier. Plus it’s free (assuming you own any edition of Skyrim) so it’s hard to pass up with so little risk aside from your time.
Wabbajack is a mod organizer / installer that lets you load mod orders that have been configured by people who borderline make Mod Orders for a living. I cannot stress enough how much they took the thinking out of modding Bethesda games.
Pay for a 1 month sub to nexus mods and set the installer to run overnight.
Don’t sleep on the Ally. I fucking LOVE this thing. I haven’t had any issues running anything I’ve asked it to at impressive specs (med to high for most). That includes Diablo 4, Cyberpunk, Witcher 3, No Man’s Sky, Dying Light 2 just to make a few.
I was saving up for a steam deck but then I heard about this bad boy and Best Buy offered financing and I was sold.
Here is what I believe to be the definitive answer for maxing out your library on 4 inputs:
Gaming PC/Steam Deck - you'll have access to a sprawling library of games from all generations and can even emulate console exclusive games from previous generations. The reason I'm not recommending an Xbox console on this list is because basically every current gen Xbox One (+ X|S) game is already on PC (as are many OG Xbox and most Xbox 360-era games), GamePass is an option if you wanna play some OG Xbox/360 games legally, and emulation can get you any games that aren't available otherwise. Sony is also making many recent PS5 exclusives available on PC now with more to come.
Nintendo Switch - it's got a kick-ass library of exclusives, almost every Wii U game has been ported over (minus like ~8, I think?), they've been remaking/remastering a lot of older games and are reportedly going to go hard on that for the remainder of the Switch's lifespan, and with NSO it has a respectable library of retro Nintendo and Sega Genesis games if you wanna go the legal route.
PS4/PS5 - A PS5 would be ideal for maxing out your possible library size, because it can play any PS4 or PS5 game; however, there also aren't a ton of PS5 exclusives at this point in time, PS5 games are being ported over to PC faster than PS4 exclusives, many recent PS5 games are also on PS4, PS4s are cheaper, and the PS4 can be jailbroken. There's a case to be made for getting a PS4 instead.
Modded PS3 - Especially if you can track down a phat model with hardware back compact support, you can load up a HDD with games and play the entire PS1, PS2, and PS3 libraries.
With these four, you should be able to play essentially any game ever made. You will have...
Official hardware support for:
PlayStation
PlayStation 2
PlayStation 3
PlayStation 4 and/or 5
Nintendo Switch
PC (Astonishingly huge library)
You will have the (paid) option of legal software support for many of the best games from:
NES
SNES
Sega Genesis
Game Boy
Game Boy Color
Game Boy Advance
Nintendo 64
Xbox
Xbox 360
You will have the capability to emulate anything from Atari 2600 through to some Nintendo Switch, including Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, arcade classics, and many, many more.
IMO, this is the best way to max out the 4 ports on your TV. You can also get a PS Vita and mod it for PS Vita + PSP games, and a 3DS modded for 3DS and NDS games. They don't need to be plugged into your TV, so they weren't included on my list of 4, but they are both excellent handheld consoles with great libraries.
Wouldn’t a Series X be better than a PS5 for range of titles, the PS5 only natively supports PS4 back cat, where as the Series X also supports a range of 360 and OG XB titles. It also adds improvements to spend of them with better frame rates or resolution.
I don't think so, only because most of the 360 games available for back compat on the Series X are already ported to PC, a lot of them can be accessed on PC by way of GamePass, and the rest can be emulated on PC. You cannot currently emulate PS4 or PS5 games and only a handful have been ported to PC so far, so original hardware is the only option for playing PlayStation exclusives. Whether to get a PS4 vs PS5 is debatable imo.
If you're planning to do everything the legal way (i.e. no emulation of games you don't own), don't want to buy discs to rip, and prefer the available Xbox & Xbox 360 games to the PlayStation exclusives, you could get a Series X--but honestly, if you are cool with buying discs and don't care about PlayStation exclusives, getting a 360 would be a significantly cheaper solution than a Series X, especially since there aren't really any console-exclusive Xbox games in the last couple of hardware gens and the 360 had better back compat for OG Xbox games than the current gen Xboxes do. So if you were gonna swap the PS for an Xbox, I'd personally go 360 over Series X.
If your laptop is having issues running Hogwarts Legacy, it might be relevant to include your laptop specs as well as some more specifics on what you’re looking for in a magic game.
Do you just want the magic system to be simple, or do you also want a simple, casual game? For example, Little Witch Nobeta has a simple magic system with a focus on magic combat, but it’s a Souls-like, so it could be on the difficult side.
Thanks for reminding me about specs, I’ll add them to the post. Though I assume that it’s mostly on Hogwarts being unoptimised, because my laptop can play Cyberpunk2077 and X-4 foundations well enough. It’s 8gb ram; Ryzen5 3550h so the processor is only 3 years old. I guess 4g VRAM isn’t enough for the physics sim of MC’s clothes (seriously why is it enabled even on lowest settings).
In a game I want decent magical combat. I want to have magical attacks that have varied effects and counters. Something that makes you think which spell to use and when. I guess the most important part for me is counters. So for example, if the enemy has a magical shield, you have to somehow deal with it first, you can’t just spam click your best spell.
The Bioshock series supports a spellcasting-based play style with a decent skill tree.
CONTROL also involves a lot of eldritch force powers in its combat sequences
I know you didn’t really want sidescrollers or top-downs but Noita and Magicka are pretty great at delivering on the creativity of mage combat and scratch this itch for me.
This YouTube creator has published several quality videos what’s going on in Wizard Games lately, which is a quick way to catch up on the genre: youtu.be/quPKQIVEX5A
I’ve played Bioshock 3 a long time ago and while fun, it isn’t what I’m looking for in terms of magic. I’ve heard 1 and 2 are a bit more deep in this regard but afaik it’s still mainly a shooter. I’m currently playing Dishonored 2 and Bioshock seems more similar to that than to Hogwarts.
Control was something I’ve wanted to play for a while, mostly because of SCP-inspired story, I didn’t know anything about it’s gameplay. Will 100% check it out.
Currently Noita is my magic game and Hogwarts was in part attempt for variety. I’ve seen Magicka on steam and I dunno why, but it didn’t click for me.
Anyway, thank you very much for the recommendations!
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