My wife loves games with that sort of gameplay loop, where you have a main gameplay style/loop within a world of people and places you get to know for both flavor and gameplay benefits. Persona is a series and SDV a game that we have put a lot of time into together. She was talking about playing P4 again, but I crave novelty....
Tokyo Xanadu and Trails of Cold Steel both follow a Persona-ish way of being RPGs mixed with socializing with party members and their community. I particularly find their social aspects stronger than Persona because they’re tied to the main story, meaning characters will often having interactions that are based on main events and not completely divorced from their plot/character developments, as well as having a more colorful cast of side characters.
Cold Steel is a fairly long series though - By itself its 4 games long, but its also part of a much larger universe and has some crossovers with other Trails games. I played the first 2, which are a somewhat self-contained story, without much issue but AFAIK they get denser from there on.
Xanadu is a more action-y game, in the vein of Ys, if you’ve played those, instead of being turn-based.
The Yakuza series also has some very strong characterization and side activities involving multiple characters, as well as a multitude of minigames. Like A Dragon (or Yakuza 7) is a soft reboot with a new main cast and also follows a more traditional turn-based RPG mechanic, highly recommended.
Warframe explains very little of its systems, and what it explains is generally poorly done. Upgrading and optimizing your abilities, acquiring proper mods and frames, how the levelling system actually works, generally anything that isn’t “shoot at enemy until it dies” needs to be taught by another player or read upon.
While everyone has been talking about Baldur’s Gate 3, I decided to cave in and started a replay of Divinity: Original Sin 2. Well, yea, I got a ten years old PC and a Ps4!
Still, what an excellent game. The easy mode goes well since the battlefields are chaotic, there’s not a single combat that I go through that doesn’t involve 1)Setting everything on fire 2)Shocking a large portion of the characters 3)Poisoning a large portion of the characters 4)Mixing all that because elemental interaction exists (Poison + Fire makes NECROFIRE which is a harsh and often deadly punishment)
But the questing and adventuring still stands out well. This is a game that has a somewhat large map, but unlike most open world fillers its a dense map. Every corner has a named NPC with a little trouble to solve, and there’s no “random cave with nameless mobs” to venture into; Every single place you can go has a little lore, a little story, something important that makes the world feel alive.
Its no surprise Larian has been taking the world by storm lately, and I’m glad this has aged so well so folks can try an original setting whenever the BG3 hype cools down.
[PS4] What are some other games with both social and other gameplay, ala Persona and Stardew Valley?
My wife loves games with that sort of gameplay loop, where you have a main gameplay style/loop within a world of people and places you get to know for both flavor and gameplay benefits. Persona is a series and SDV a game that we have put a lot of time into together. She was talking about playing P4 again, but I crave novelty....
What's a good game you played with an awful tutorial? angielski
Either it didn’t teach you anything at all, or it taught you the most irrelevant parts of the game.
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of August 20th
Another week another thread. Whatcha y’all playing? And why is it Baldur’s gate 3?