Topic: PS4 recommendation thread

@Tasuki The Witcher 3?

@Tasuki Dragon’s Dogma ran me 40 hours doing most of the side-quests but ignoring the DLC it came with. It’s a game with good RPG combat and building your character up. It also is made with new-game Plus in mind even though I haven’t done that. It has a fantastic sense of adventure as you explore the world, a very impressive sense of adventure.
@Tasuki @Octane Yeah, the whicher is a great RPG, ur one of the worst things about is that it is an RPG with a leveling system. It would much better off without the leveling, so for tat reason I’d advise against as a reccomendation for what Tasuku is looking for.

@Jaz007 Well, he asked for a game in which you ''[take] a character from level one and building them up while exploring the world doing quests, side quests and such.''

Sounds like The Witcher 3 to me; Fantasy setting, big open world to explore, with a good amount of quality side quests and a ton of lore; a leveling system, it's not too difficult, and there's even a bit of crafting involved!

Besides, don't most RPGs have some sort of leveling system?

@Tasuki
Dragon's Dogma has fun combat and many kind of builds to try, but the map isn't that big.
Skyrim has a huge map, tons of lore and quests but combat is meh.
The Dishonored series is a must, imho, and now it's deadly cheap so you should try at least one of its three episodes.

@Tasuki I’ve never played WoW, but here’s my personal take —
I’ve played several that have been mentioned. Dragon’s Dogma, Skyrim, Dragon Age Inquisition, Shadow of Mordor (haven’t played Shadow of War), and Dishonored.
DD - great game. 8/10. Has most of what I think you’re looking for
Skyrim - also a great game. 8.5/10. I’m not sure how it would hold up now, but it was my obsession for a while when it released
Shadow of Mordor - solid game 7/10. Combat is really good and more Batman Arkham-like, but the setting is an open world but smaller and more like Ubisoft tower inspired world. Shadow of War is supposed to be much bigger and better, but I can’t speak from experience.
Dragon Age Inquisition - good game 7.5/10. This was the first one that came to mind with your description of what you want. The world is big and the number of quests is a little too much for me and so I never finished it, despite enjoying my time. Probably I put in about 40-50 hours and was maybe half way through I’d guess. Maybe I’ll resume it someday.
Dishonored - the game never stuck with me. I played so little of it I could hardly score it, but I think it must be good since it is so highly regarded. The first person perspective was part of what didn’t sit well with me. Again, maybe one day I’ll try it again.
Witcher 3 - from all accounts, it seems to be of the type of game you are looking for but it still sits in my backlog, never been booted up. It’s enormity is part of my hesitation to start it. I will play it one day. If you do decide to try it, I’d love to hear how you like it because a new perspective would be great to help me know how high to put it on my priority list.

@Tasuki Another huge vote for TW3, unless you're after a create-your-own-hero game.

I played Dragon's Dogma on PS3 (PS+ freebie) and it was great fun. The map is small but the ability to fast travel is very limited but you will retread a lot of ground so this isn't a bad thing. The pawn system is also quite unique; you essentially create an NPC ally who follows you around but you can also download one(?) from someone else's game to help you too.

The combat is fun and allows you to climb onto bigger enemies; grabbing onto the back of a flying enemy is quite cool. The story is okay and the voice acting pretty dodgy but it's quite a cult game.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I think I will pick up Witcher III right now since it's on sale but I ended up picking up Kingdoms of Amaular on my Xbox One since it's backwards compatible there.

I have indeed played Dragon Age Inquisition a few years ago and enjoyed for what it's worth.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

@Octane The point is that while many RPGs have a leveling system that works well, in the Witcher 3 it does little more than serve to unbalance the difficulty after a little bit and make fighting supposedly fearsome creatures that are suppose to be tough for Geralt feel underwhelming cooler in concept than in practice and actually hunting them. The game would be much better without it.

@Kidfried The upgrade tree was a good idea, but the rest of it didn’t do much for the game. In a avane like that the developers need to keep control over the difficulty rather than give it to numbers like they did. It’s really easy to overlevel in that game.

@Jaz007 @Kidfried I can understand both parts of the argument.

I actually like RPGs that have a level system like Borderlands, or the Assassin's Creed games now or even Diablo it gives me a sense of my character getting stronger as oppose to games like Breath of the Wild where there is no level system. That was one of my biggest problems with Breath of the Wild and why I didn't enjoy the game at all no sense of progression. I could literally start the game and go straight to Ganon and beat him. Where as something like say Assassin's Creed game each area you have to be a certain level to go to and can't just go straight to the end.

However the problem with level based game, which I have ran into particularly when I played WoW is if you are very thorough player and one of those that have to do every side quest in an area before moving to the next like I do, then you quickly can accidently becoming to powerful and out level stuff making epic fights and such feel less epic.

It's just like the old days of RPGs on the SNES when you got to a particular boss and couldn't get pass them what did most of us do, go and grind levels by just doing random encounters. I remember hearing somewhere, probably on the playground at school that in order to beat Kefka in Final Fantasy III (VI) on SNES you had to be level 99 so I did that and when I took him on he was too easy and I beat him no problem 😂.

Nowadays RPG developers add side quests and such so you don't have to spend hours grinding random battles over and over but as I said you can end up quickly over leveling. I did that with Assassin's Creed Origins in fact but again it's cause I am a completionist when it comes to RPGs so I can definitely see where @Jaz007 is coming from

@Tasuki Personally I think TW3 trounces over Dragon Age Inquisition in every department. I never completed DAI as I played TW3 after and that killed the former off for me. The side quests in DAI were so dull and most things felt like a chore to do. Like going back to base to update stuff, who thought that was a good idea? In contrast to TW3 where the side quests felt so organic to the main game and are better that some main quests in other games. It is a credit to the games that other series have tried to copy it (Assassin's Creed) yet still not better it imo.

I don't quite get the criticism of the levelling system, it felt perfectly fine for me. Sure there is a danger of being overpowered, just like in every other open world RPG with a similar system. But there are enough warnings in the game to help with this, and I much prefer it that way to the enemies levelling up with you.

I finished TW3 before they introduced enemy level scaling which was quite a shock when I came back to the game for the DLC; packs of wolves I previously would have one-hitted now ruined me. It was definitely for the better though.

Also @Tasuki be sure to pick up all the free DLC for the game. Some of it was simply cosmetic (bonus haircuts, alt costumes etc) but some more cooler like added finishing moves, more Gwent cards. Even more impressively, entire new missions were added and some of these were among my favourites.

The paid DLC is also better than most games but playing the base game plus all that might take you through to 2020.

@Thrillho Playing Hearts of Stone during the main campaign is definitely recommended though. And I think that you'll have a harder time finding a vanilla copy of TW3, aren't most copies the GOTY edition at this point, even the digital ones?

@Tasuki I had completely forgot about Kingdoms of Amalur. That’s also a very good game. I quite enjoyed it. 8/10. Good choice.
I’m excited to hear how you like the legendary Witcher 3.

@Tasuki I'm interested to hear what you think of Kingdoms of Amular. The story was great, being written by the talented writer R.A. Salvatore. The combat was so so, but the writing and world made up for it. I liked the idea of playing in a world during the time of great legendary stories, not a millennia later and hearing about them second hand. For example, the elves were around and doing well, not a society that disappeared or was a shadow of its past.
Witcher 3 is great too of course, but that is well known. For me, I'm looking forward to my next rpg Nier or Kingdomcome Deliverance whichever goes on a psn sale first.

Driveclub + Driveclub VR or Gran Turismo Sport?

I'm thinking of picking up something that I can also play with my PSVR. Getting both versions of Driveclub is actually a little cheaper than GTS. All of them have mixed reviews it seems. I'm mainly looking for a game that has a bunch of offline content. So no always-online, because the internet can be a fickle over here; and I simply don't really care about playing against strangers online.

The Council and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice are currently €15 each in the store. Is that a good price? Worth it for someone who enjoys story-heavy games with, honestly, minimal combat challenge? Good ports? I can deal with clunky game mechanics as long as they don't interfere with the meat of the game.

@Tjuz Not sure about The Council, but hellblade was a timed exclusive for ps4 so was defo made for consoles in mind, so it wasn't even ported over or anything.

@Tjuz I posted my impressions of The Council on another thread a few months ago. If you’re interested then it may be worth a read:
https://www.pushsquare.com/forums/ps4/what_ps4_games_are_you_...

Those were my thoughts after just playing the first episode. Subsequently I have played the second episode (I think there are 5 total episodes, each probably about 3-4 hours in length, give or take) and started the third. I pretty much stand by my initial thoughts there however. Approx. 6/10 type of quality, but that would probably elevate for you specifically if you are a fan of the genre - story driven, no combat, choice-and-consequence, etc. And if you like historical time period pieces, then you’ll like it even more. As I say in my other post on the link, the RPGish elements are quite well conceived and innovative for a story adventure game, but the mechanics of movement and navigating the world is a little, as you say, “clunky” for sure.
I eventually found a review online of all the episodes (it was surprisingly difficult to find as most outlets only reviewed episode 1, like Push Square did) and it seems the first and last episodes are stronger than the middle ones. Alas, the fact that now 3 months later I still haven’t finished the whole series may be telling. I fully intend to, but I got side tracked by other games.

As for Hellblade — you and I must be on the same wavelength because I bought it on sale a long time ago and it has sat in my backlog for a while and just this past weekend I downloaded it to my hard drive thinking that it’s about time I played it. I was deliberating on whether to finish The Council, starts Hellblade, or try something new. And almost as if I flipped a coin in my head and then ignored the result — I clicked on Transistor as an impulse play instead. But between Hellblade and The Council, I think the former is likely to be a more polished and solid title, having won GOTY honors in some outlets and being so critically acclaimed. I think for that price, both games are probably worth a go.

Just looking for games that me and my gf could play on the same PS4 ( multi player ) that have campaigns kinda like borderlands 2.