Well, the mods do some heavy lifting for sure (I mean, the game is literally unplayable without the unofficial patch), but they can only fix so much. The game was - much like Cyberpunk - shipped in an unfinished state that is to some extent beyond the scope of repair for mods. The final third of Bloodlines is not great. You can tell they ran out of time and had to cobble together an ending somehow with what they had. It devolves into a series of combat encounters in a game that is not exactly famous for its combat gameplay. Compare the last sections of the game to Santa Monica to see what I mean; imagine if they were afforded the time to give the whole game the same amount of thought and polish as they could Santa Monica.
Still, much like Cyberpunk, when it’s operating at full capacity it really hits the spot. Driving through the rain at night in first person through Night City gives me sort of similar vibes as walking the rainy streets of Santa Monica, listening to Rik Schaffer’s phenomenal soundtrack. Both games nail the atmosphere, at least at times.
They’re actually fairly similar, carried by their characters, stories, setting and atmosphere rather than gameplay.
I also have to mention the combination of Bloodlines cartoony art direction and the facial animation rigging of Source Engine. The characters are incredibly expressive for a 2004(!) game, it really holds up well.
Did not expect to be thinking about reinstalling that today, but here we are!
In the voice of Alistair Grout: Damn it all, now I’m doing it too!
The game will never be what people wanted (and what was - to some extent - promised). It’s too flawed and unfinished to be fixable through patches.
I still thoroughly enjoyed it (I’m just about to finish my first playthrough at 100+ hours), but the game has to be approached with the understanding that it’s fundamentally flawed. I have no problems with that, Fallout: New Vegas is one of my favourite games so I’m comfortable with the situation and I’m used to fixing problems myself through mods (yes, even on a first playthrough).
The best comparison I can think of is Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (though perhaps that game is now too old to be a relevant example). You can’t play it expecting a finished, polished product, but it’s still worthwhile and the good parts are really good.
Welonz is fantastic in general. Always thoughtful and thorough and seems to approach whatever game she’s playing with great respect. She even did a watchable LP of Return of the Obra Dinn, which is extremely rare.
I haven’t checked her channel in a few months because for a while she was doing mono-Dragon Age, but at a cursory glance it looks like she has a moved to a more varied upload schedule these days, which is good.
I’m trying to put it in a way that won’t spoil clues for those who haven’t played it yet, but I ended up with plenty of notes and even took screenshots of the ship maps to scribble notes on.
God I wish I could forget all about it and play it for the first time again.
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.
You know, that sounds sick actually. Especially if it was more sandboxy than linear, and also had some kind of survival system (pay for food/rent) to add tension and encourage risk taking when snooping around.
Yeah, like I said it’s not an exact match, but if you hadn’t tried it I thought perhaps it would scratch that same deduction itch. Plus it has that Wiki element since a fair bit of clues are based around cultural and nautical history as well as languages and dialects.
There is an item that allows you to teleport to your party members, so you could still split up and do sidequests separately, only joining forces when combat is triggered.
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.
Ever since I was a kid I have wanted a Pokémon game with real-time action combat that approximates the fight scenes in the anime, not only incorporating movement and dodging but also counter-moves like using fire attacks to nullify Razor Leaves.
I haven’t had a chance to play it yet since I don’t own a PS5, but your comments sound a lot like what Yahtzee brought up in his review.
I too have been sceptical since I first heard about the idea of a “serious, mature mainline FF game”, since to me that sounds almost antithetical to what the series represents (it’s even got Fantasy in the name!).
I also have to say, knowing it was made by the same team as FFXIV dampened my interest in it a little. I played that game for a while (and enjoyed it quite a bit initially), but as time went on and I moved onto later expansions I started to lose interest in not only the story and the way it was told but also the direction the game was evolving in mechanically for the various classes.
I’m not saying it’s objectively bad, but it started to feel like my tastes for story and gameplay no longer align with Sony Creative Business Unit 3.
Lots of great suggestions already but I want to throw in another recommendation for Splinter Cell. The series lost it’s identity later on, but Chaos Theory still holds up in my opinion with some great levels.