For what it’s worth, I thought it’d be horrible from the reviews and ended up trying it anyway, and I actually really enjoyed it. shrug Rather feels like I played a different game than everyone else.
I’m sure it’s partly the difference between starting with rock bottom expectations vs starting with Prey/Dishonored expectations, but I think even without that I’d like it.
Also, it has no micro transactions! Zero. Not even for cosmetics - those are just unlockables. Credit where credit is due.
Anyway if you liked the look of the trailer and you have gamepass, it’s worth at least trying, imo.
I wonder why they haven’t tried the model airport books and comics use, though. We could do it with games at this point. Like, make a series of games that are low budget, relatively short, and easy to pump out very quickly, but with a distinct series identity and maybe a consistent writer/artist across games. Then make a lot of them and get people hooked on the series instead of on 1 mega game.
Even just text adventure style games, wireframe arcade style games, bullethells, shooters like Vampire Survivor & etc, visual novels, syuff like Undertale, whatever? I think it’s clear that a low budget or small team doesn’t equate to unpopularity these days, if the game is made with care and attention to detail.
We do have series now but they’re high budget and long and kind of also trying to be the 1 mega game at the same time.
There’s also a lot of options for reaching new/underserved audience. Like. Make a high quality horse game for once, please? And profit off a bazillion horse girls who’ve been waiting for just that for decades.
Or make games for other countries that don’t have a big video games market yet, maybe. Like sell a console real cheap, at a loss, and then sell games in an area where there’s less competition? Maybe.
Game Pass is still $9.99 a month for PC, unless they upped the priced literally today. So $40 for 4 months, which includes new released games that are otherwise still sold full price, and narrative indie titles that most would only play through once anyways.
I specifically avoid most gaming sites and forums because I hate this type of casual spoiling. I don’t want to have to avoid beehaw gaming too.
I know a lot of people don’t care about spoilers, and that’s a-okay and a valid way to enjoy games. But surprises are very important to the way I enjoy them. I hardly ever replay games either, for this reason. I totally understand why some people don’t care at all, but nonetheless, spoilers like this do affect my enjoyment of games. This one admittedly probably less so than most, but even so, I’d have rather not known ahead of time.
Edit: ah, apparently this was part of a marketing campaign? That’s more forgiveable, then, for people to be chatting about it, though I still don’t want to know.
I think it doesn’t truly mean “Japanese RPG’s”, even today. There are lots of Japanese games that don’t get called JRPG’s even though they are RPG’s or have those elements (there is ambiguitiy in what an RPG is too, admittedly), like Resident Evil games and Dark Souls games and Zelda games and Pokemon. Dark Souls especially, since they have the character building and stats as well as the roleplaying.
People don’t call Elden Ring a JRPG because JRPG is supposed to mean one thing but really it carries a lot connotations about mechanics, graphics, and the derogatory connotations about quality.
And Pokemon! Pokemon is very clearly a JRPG in the mechnical and graphics sense, but it doesn’t typically get called a JRPG. I think this is because of the negative connotations of JRPG, personally.
And on the other hand we have things like Chained Echoes, which is in all mechanical and graphical ways is a textbook JRPG, except it’s not made in Japan at all, but rather inspired by Japanese games.
I agree this is complicated, but I found Jimquisition’s video on the topic really persuasive. I recommend that one even for people normally don’t jive with Jimquisition’s style.
Within any group, there will always be some who don’t find a term offensive even while others do, but I think probably the best outcome in this case is for the general populace to move away from the term, while leaving space for Japanese video game devs to reclaim it and use it themselves if they wish to.
Maybe it will truly lose the negative connotations with time, but I don’t think we’re there yet, when people are only just starting to sometimes acknowledge it ever had those connotations in the first place.
Granted, most genre words are vague and confusing as hell - JRPG isn’t special in that sense - but most don’t have the racist history/implications or negative connotations. And when I try to think of another genre label that is used as an insult, the first that comes to mind is Visual Novel, which is another one that is heavily associated with Japan.
That’s a good point. There are a heck of a lot of people primarily on game pass, now, especially.
I also wonder if they account for people who dual-boot Linux and Windows, and who game only on Windows or who use both depending on the game.
Does a steam deck owner with a Windows desktop gaming PC turn up twice in these numbers, in both the Linux and the Windows users count, do you think? Because then the Linux number would go up 1 without the Windows number going down.
Edit: aside from this, SteamOS and desktop Linux distros aren’t necessarily comparable enough to be throwing together in the same category. A lot of the things that make SteamOS a smart choice for the deck, where they can control and optimize for the hardware, don’t apply to desktops the same way.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Windows 12 comes out, since people are unhappy with 11 and thus maybe more willing to jump ship, and Microsoft has a tendency to alternate between releasing good and bad OS’s.
Your own friend group is the definition of selection bias, though - at the least, they know you and probably have similar interests/hobbies to some degree, and I daresay you’ve probably said something about Linux to them before.
And there’s a whole, active subreddit for people who put windows on steam deck - apparently the initial problems people had with it have been getting ironed out more and more.
I don’t know which is more common but I’d need to see actual data, either way.
The user experience, and required troubleshooting, is still obnoxious. Even on the steam deck it’s obnoxious. It’s just not reliable, much as people hype it up. You’ll have to do a lot of troubleshooting at unexpected times when you really don’t want to be troubleshooting or might be pressed for time.
If you have an nvidia graphics card you can expect trouble with drivers, too.
If you have Windows 10 pro (or I think there’s a workaround to enable it if you just have the Home version), you can go into the group policy editor and disable those annoying pop-ups. You can even disable auto-updates, if you want to, or control how they work. And you can disable most of their telemetry. Windows 10 has a lot of flexibility if you know where to look/figure it out. They make it annoying to deal with, yes, but it has never been has horrible as Linux is for me whenever I’ve tried it, and it’s actually reliable.
Edit: also worth mentioning, depending on the games you play, a lot of multiplayer games’ anti-cheat systems do not work on Linux at all, so you can’t play those games on it.
Game Pass is great if you want to try a lot of different games and see what you like without having to do research or worry about whether or not a particular game is worth your $$. Especially if you like playing small indie games and tend not to replay them anyway - this way, $10-15 and you can play multiple new and old indie games for the price of one (or less), plus try a few of the big games, and maybe get surprised by games you didn’t think you’d like but gave a shot because they were included. And if you do want to replay any eventually, by then, the price will have dropped and you’ve still saved $$.
This is offset however by the fact it’s still buggy and frustrating as all hell sometimes. I hate the way it works with virtual drives. And it doesn’t work for stuff you want to mod or play the dlc for (no way no how am I actually buying a game/dlc on that platform).
I think it just depends on whether you feel like the game is respecting your time or not.
A long game that’s eating up time with boring random encounters, fetch quests, grinding that you don’t enjoy, and so on? Ain’t got time for that, I’ll play something else.
But a long game where I’m enjoying near every minute and every aspect, like an RPG that’s been crafted absurdly well and isn’t filled with bloat and has fun combat in every encounter? I’m all in for that.
I think the issue is mainly that for obvious reasons there are FAR more of the former than the latter, even before accounting for personal taste.
The money-saving depends on your ability to not buy more games, though. This doesn’t seem to be actually doable for most people. For me it isn’t because I find I need variety in my games or else I lose interest in the medium altogether.
There can definitely be a magic in living in a good game, though.
I want a Persona game but with the characters in college instead of highschool.
Maybe Shin Megami Tensei has older characters? But the problem is the vibe is so different. A lot of anime/manga with older characters go for a completely different tone. The friendship and family theme heart of the Persona games, and the hopefulness, is essential to me. I just want some of that hope for but targeted at adults for once.
Imo “adult” aimed media often has a real problem with conflating maturity with misery and sex. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way because it’s gotta be part of why so many adults still read YA books and play games with precocious teenage protagonists.