I agree with the stuff the article says, from my knowledge. I quit when they sunset some of the expansions and planets, and even then the whole difficult to catch up meta was a thing, and the incredible levels of monetization were everywhere.
It's still the best feeling shooter I've ever played, but even that wasn't enough for me to wade through everything else. I couldn't just play and enjoy the game without being ripped out of my immersion by content I hadn't bought begging for it and FOMO based design decisions that kept me uncomfortable and rushing.
I still replay that trilogy every so often, if you still enjoy visual novel style games you should play them again! Still have endearing characters and a banging soundtrack
I think what you're noticing about on foot sections in modern space games is because merging that sort of experience with a space sim is truly the space sim's "final frontier", so to speak. It's the only part of an immersive gameplay experience that is yet to be executed as cleanly as the in-ship portion of a deep systems driven sci Fi space exploration game.
It's why Starfield is the way it is, they tried to conquer that frontier as well, and had to make a lot of concessions to do so and didn't have any prior experience in that sort of genre. I think it is safe to say that Starfield didn't succeed well enough or deep enough to be the definitive shining example of a space sim with equally executed space and ground gameplay styles (partially because it's not truly a space sim at all, more like an arcadey take on it )
One day a game will, and it'll be awesome, but it'll probably still be a while. Starfield showed that even if you throw lots of money and a professional team at it it's not a sort of game you can easily make.
Are you playing the Legendary editions? The first one definitely didn't age super well, even on LE. the mako sections are not great, the combat is decent with the LE changes, and random planet exploration is not very good either.
but the story, character stuff, and the lore of the world are very good, and it's a great kickstart to the universe and your investment in the rest of the trilogy, 2 is SIGNIFICANTLY better than the first and by the third you're really invested and the gameplay has made great strides. It's a little tough to get into, but it does really snowball into something incredible.
Also, in the first one, there is a point of no return that the game doesn't warn you about explicitly, I missed out on doing DLC or character specific side quests because I went too far and couldn't return, be careful.
Man, I gotta get back to that. I almost cleared the whole first Michigan map entirely and took a break, but I really loved the slow paced thoughtful approach to a "driving" game.
I think they're talking about hours to price that you get from other people or websites. Your personal hours to price of course is worth quite a bit, but there's no way to know it for sure until you've already paid, at which point its use as purchasing advice is already lost.
I wouldn't say it's entirely worthless, but sure, I'd still far prefer that to someone mindlessly speculating with no reference of how accurate the info is
i play guild wars 2 in bursts, and then stop for a while in between. about a year ago i was grinding hard to get the skyscale mount, which was quite a grind at the time, and i normally only play solo, but there was a step that required me to beat a small open world dungeon that was just a bit too difficult for me to get through by myself, so i solicited help from some random guy who was standing outside.
That guy helped me a great deal and i wouldn't have been able to do it without him. after we finished the dungeon he offered for me to join their guild, which, on my own, i would never do, but coming off the high of finishing the dungeon, and feeling like i owed him, i accepted. i ended up doing guild weeklies with them quite a few times and going on discord chat and all, super chill people, it was honestly pretty fun. but alas, i fell off the guild wars 2 train and they removed me due to inactivity, but extended an offer that i could return if i ever got back into the game.
overall an awesome experience, i'm still grateful to that guy, and grateful to that guild for giving me some entertaining guild chat nights where i spent more time shooting the shit with them than actually playing the game.
If I had to pick one... Katana ZERO. Nice mix of genres, really emotional soundtrack, lots of synthwave type electronic, all of the artists who contributed songs really put work and passion in there, they work excellently for the game, and are awesome to listen to in their own right outside of the game.
Dragon's Crown on the Vita. Awesome Diablo meets Golden Axe sort of game. Really wish this one would make its way off Playstation so everyone could experience it.