I'm back into Final Fantasy VII, which I've never finished before. I've been playing this game off and on over the past several years, and boy is that a rough way to play it. It's very difficult to remember what I was supposed to be doing next, because that game often gives you one line of dialogue about where to go and then has no in-game reminder of it. As a result, I've got a walkthrough handy to reference whenever I'm lost. I just got to the bottom of the mountain after the snowboarding sequence, and those parts of the game where you're trying to navigate the pre-rendered backgrounds are where you can feel its age the most. I'm hoping to finish this one up in the next month or so, ahead of the possible Rebirth PC port that we might be lucky enough to get this year.
I'm replaying Horizon: Zero Dawn on PC ahead of the Forbidden West release as a refresher on the story, though I'm not going to play the sequel on day 1. They made me wait several years for it already. They can keep waiting for my money until it gets a sale down to about $40, maybe this summer. I still really enjoy the combat in that game, especially on higher difficulties, but this is a game that still feels like I'd enjoy it more if I could select missions from a menu rather than going through the open world trappings. It may have made these games cheaper to develop at the same time. Oh well.
I finished The Outer Worlds and its DLC. I highly recommend it. I feel like this game gets overlooked often enough. Did you wish Starfield was better? Play The Outer Worlds. Did you want another Fallout: New Vegas? Play The Outer Worlds.
Now that I've finished The Outer Worlds, another Obsidian game, I'm back to playing some Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I only progressed one quest a little bit this past week, but I want to keep pushing forward and finish this game before Avowed comes out.
Other than the above, still more Skullgirls grind. My pushblock guard cancel skills have atrophied, and I need to run some drills. Also, Peacock zoning, even when I know the answers, is tough to deal with.
At first I was a bit wary, not playing as Phoenix and missing some of the characters I grew to love and all that, but Apollo’s grown on me. He’s just as much of an idiot as Phoenix was, but in a bit of a different way.
Loved Trucy since the moment she was introduced. And I’m glad to see Ema Skye again, as well.
I think taking a break from the baggage of the Feys and Dahlia is actually a breath of fresh air, even if it’s just for this one game.
Also, much prefer the “Perceive” mechanic to the “Psyche-locks”, though I know people have differing opinions.
One of the reasons I replayed Dead Space (2023) was to get the ng+ ending. Did I get all the Marker collectables that I was supposed to gather? Yes. Did I know I had to put them in a special place before leaving the Ishimura? No. No, I did not. So guess who's playing Dead Space again? (Yes, I know I could just YouTube it, but that's not the point.) Anyway, still having fun with this game.
I had an itch to replay Resident Evil 5, so I did. I had no idea that there was an update that made all the QTEs optional (except for some of the bosses). But apparently there was. I'm surprised that almost 15 years later they made a change to it. But thank the elder gods they did, because the QTEs during the cutscenes always made me anxious, especially towards the end.
Played a demo for a game called Haunted House Renovator. It was actually kind of lengthy for a demo and pretty fun. It will be interesting seeing the full product when it comes out.
I love the Dead space remake. I’ve nearly finished it. It’s how I remember the original looking and how I hoped it would play. I love that they added the full zero g movement from the later games and they fixed the asteroid shooting section. It’s actually fun now! The regenerator is still as much of a bastard as I remember too. It’s a brilliant remake of one of my favourite games.
Totally agree! I love how faithful the devs were to the original, and all the enhancements they made, story or otherwise, only add to it imo. Although I think my favorite thing is that they gave Isaac is his voice, and with the original voice actor from 2 & 3 at that.
Same, and I’ve just spent the entire weekend getting from 46% to 60% completion. I didn’t expect it to be this good and this long. Each new location I’m in awe, then I get its map and see how huge the area is going to be. There’s SO MUCH to explore!
Warrior Within used to be my favorite Prince of Persia game, but now it has changed to The Lost Crown. It’s just SO good.
It sounds like how you feel about Rebirth is pretty similar to how I felt about Remake having played the original several times. Not going to say you couldn’t or shouldn’t have enjoyed it, but there were a ton of story bits and minigames that frustrated the hell out of me.
I’m guessing it’s a bug/texture glitch. Since your mates couldn’t see it, I guess it was loaded by error or very likely by a hacker. Probably your game couldn’t handle it and the texture loading for it went wrong because of that.
I guess I don’t mind it. The side quests aren’t the most exciting of activities, but they lead to a lot of great things. Like extra transmuter options, and party level increases for synergy abilities. unique accessories, and unique conversations with party members you wouldn’t see otherwise. Plus some of the best materia is only accessible from chadley. So I haven’t been minding it all that much. As you unlock life springs, you unlock more info about the environments you’re in. For me the rewards outweigh the monotony.
I feel like this game is Squeenix’s love letter to the OG FF7. They took the original open world section, which wasn’t the most exciting either (I remember spending a lot of time grinding mobs) and reimagined it. Is clearing every tower and side quest the most exciting gameplay? Probably not, but as a longtime fan I enjoy the little things like seeing the Fort Condor mini game reimagined and learning about the lore of the world. As others have said you CAN skip a lot of the side quests and it does get more linear in parts (Chapter 3 and backend of Chapter 4 comes to mind).
I agree, if you took out the side quests and mini games you’d get another FF16 which was an absolute slog by the end of it because of how monotonous it was with lack of variety
FF16 only ever became a slog due to its side content and the difficulty of such once you were levelled last a certain point. Story content was always great, even for the side stuff. But the gameplay for the side stuff got very tedious after the third half. I also ended up doing everything too. So I know how boring it can be. Still loved the game as a whole though. Mostly due to the story and characters.
I’ll admit, it’s probably not disingenuous to the original for it to be crammed with minigames, whether or not they changed it up with new ones. When the original was one game, leaving Midgar was very much a moment of freedom they wanted to capitalize on, so it was the perfect checkpoint to start giving the player optional activities.
That said, the “Towers” subject in particular (what I believe prompted the “Ubisoft style” comment) is something I feel like gamers need to cool down on. As much as people habitually throw shade on Ubisoft for starting them, they make sense, and can be done in an interesting way. If you have an open world environment, you want players to rely on the ugly minimap as little as possible; that often means both a focus on vertical movement that allows you chances to see the space in front of you, as well as tall buildings that encourage distant exploration. I really think towers get unfair criticism, even if a few games have done them in less fun ways (I could be biased - I think even in their initial appearances in Far Cry 3, they were actually fun to climb)
Yeah your understanding about the towers is correct. I don’t think it’s inherently bad, I’ve even enjoyed it in some of the AC games, but in rebirth it just feels like a bad chore list. Some of the combat challenges can be interesting but the ones with the summon stones (I forget the name, but they reduce the power of summon fights and do other things) and scanning the life springs are just terrible imo.
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