Yeah, I didn’t bother with a second playthrough because of this. It’s strange because the idea is great, so why not encourage the player to do a second playthrough by not allowing him/her to see everything on a single run ?
To be honest, I really enjoyed my run (100 hours in). If you omit the bugs, it’s a nice alternative to Skyrim with a very different setting (space) and some quality of life improvements (eg: having your ship to store shit anywhere you go, instead of traveling back and forth to your house if you have any).
But I admit the game feels very old in general (especially because of those loading screens, which should be a thing from the past in 2023), and is not original at all on its FPS mechanics. There is also this odd feeling that the game does not want to block you access to anything (while the new game plus, which is a very good idea and introduced in a clever way, should have been enough to be more « punishing » with the player).
As an « old » gamer, it was not a big issue (especially because I play ton of retrogaming games, along with recent releases), but I totally understand what a player expecting a modern SF RPG game might feel.
Well, I am 30+ years old and have no problem to buy games full price. I would have played those games even if they weren’t on the Gamepass. That’s why I said it’s more a question of taste in gaming that explains why you consider such games just « decent ». I think if you try to list your « 9 or 10 out of 10 games », I will have no or little interest in most of them (and that’s fine, no one is wrong here ^^).
My message was more to take advantage of the Gamepass for the games that are worth it, for the time it is worth it. Even if 99% of the games were trash, it would still be worth it to subscribe and play those 1% (and unsubscribe when you are done).
Depends on your taste I guess. I don’t play those games because they are there, but because they are « on my list ». I don’t think games like Ori, Hades, Hi-Fi rush, Call of the sea, Persona 5, etc are trash. And when nothing interests me anymore, I just unsubscribe and come back a few months later when there are at least a few interesting games. I agree that I wouldn’t only play on gamepass :).
I much prefer to play on Gamepass at the moment. From my personal experience, I will simply never have the time to play again to 90% of my games. It’s just impossible (even if I stopped playing new games today, I am not sure I will be able to do so before I die). Since it’s way cheaper to play this way, I don’t see the point of buying new games anymore (I still buy a few games per year, and just cancel my membership while playing them such as Nintendo games or games I really want to play day one like Cyberpunk).
Besides, over the years, I built up an emulation setup with all the games I played (and old games I would likely play at some point, since I dedicate 50% of my play time to retrogaming). It’s not like it is necessary to own them to play them if you want a nostalgia trip a few decades after their initial release.
Besides, the vast majority of those games will still be available in the future (physical copies, online stores, remaster/remakes, piracy, emulation). I believe it is unnecessary to own every single game in the fear of the being able to (potentially) play it once again in 10 years.
I agree that the gamepass model will likely collapse at some point if it becomes too popular, but it’s not a problem to take advantage to it while it’s profitable and drop it when it’s not anymore (just unsubscribe when you don’t use it, which is what I do 4-6 months per year to play other games).
As I usually say, playing day one is playing to the WORST version of the game 😅. I will still play it day one if I can complete my current games, but we have to keep this in mind when playing day one.