Topic: What PS4 Games Are You Currently Playing?

@HallowMoonshadow There was a point in the game early on where I nearly gave up on it as I was having trouble advancing along as it felt like I was blocked/gate from advancing everywhere I went. It took me several hours to finally figure out what to do, and once I did manage to it felt like every gate just kept tumbling down and the game really started clicking for me. I admit I have not played a good portion of the JRPG genre yet unfortunately since I ignored the genre for a long time after failing to finish 3 Final Fantasy games, but things have gone so well for me with Ys VIII that I would call it one of my favorite JRPGs (behind Final Fantasy 7 Remake of course).

I'm not saying you shouldn't revisit the game again someday, but obviously just because I've joined the side that really loves the game doesn't mean you were wrong. Crazy maybe is the better word.

Yeah, I think I am actually near the end of Chapter 5. I could be wrong as the chapter is absolutely massive, but I think I might actually be right this time.

Can’t remember who recommend me this (Ness or AdamN ?) but I’ve been playing efootball 2023 almost religiously for the last week.

On paper it’s everything I hate. GaaS, F2P, always online…. - but it’s genuinely pretty great?
I’ve not spend a single penny. The single player events & debut missions are enough to get you a pretty great team. You can sign pretty much any player via the main free in-game currency & then train them with the free rewards given by just playing a match (ai or online).

The value & premium match/season pass is very enticing, but it’s not needed- regular is just fine. Epic cards with special skills do hold an advantage, but it does come down to skill/tactic.
This is live service done right (also has 600mil downloads somehow).

@Fight_Teza_Fight It plays a great game of football. I played it religiously for about 3 months, but then did fall off hard suddenly. I did spent a little bit on it to show a bit of support, but think i got a bit fed up by the lack of new modes.

So feel beyond excited to finally have begun playing The Last of Us 2. Feel very lucky to being to finally play the game. #Lifeisgood.

@JohnnyShoulder Yeah I can certainly see that happening. I’ve finished 4/6 events already. I can’t do 1 event as I don’t meet the requirements (line up & subs are la liga only)- so I’ll be waiting for a refresh.

I’ve got enough gold coins to get the value pass for free, but I’ll save them.
There’s currently a sale on coins (1x only) which I’ll take advantage of to show my support.

I wish there was some way to incorporate Master League, but that would probably cripple their business model.
I’d pay £20 for a Master League expansion even if it’s only for a year.

@oliverp Enjoy. One of the greatest games ever made imo. Going in completely blind, or has it been spoiled?

@Fight_Teza_Fight Mostly blind which is something Iam very glad for. Its funny but I have come to the conclusion that for a gaming experience to be spoiled for me I have to do a lot of online reading and youtube watching before (which is something I try not to do).

Ha ha there is certainly a Sailor Moon-esque "magical girl" like element to the dresspheres. If I remember right FFX had a LOT of female fans in japan and X-2 was an attempt to try and cultivate that?

Though considering half the costumes have Yuna, Rikku and Paine in fairly skimpy outfits, the infamous massage minigame and Leblanc's design in general you could've been fooled into thinking it was aimed at teenage boys

Impressive? Sure you don't mean worrying?

Yeah I've always fizzled out on Bitterblack Isle myself too despite my adoration for the base game but whenever I get around to replaying it for the umpteenth time I'll definitely make sure to beat it if only for the boss fight there which is supposed to be rather nifty!

Other then it going to look absolutely gorgeous on the RE engine (and no doubt using some of the framework from Monster Hunter) I'm not quite sure what they'll do with the sequel Sol. Maybe add the elves (and I think I recall there were going to be orcs too) that were going to be in the og game? Over 60% of DD was cut so... Maybe that's why the story is very weirdly presented to you too?

I wouldn't mind some more classes myself. I never found mages to be all that fun (Aside from magic archer) so hopefully that'll get a tweak too!

Crazy? Pffft I knew that A long time ago @KilloWertz ha ha

I don't think you have a whole lotta game left from what I recall. Only one or two more chapters I think?

Anyway I hope you enjoy the rest of it as much as you have so far!

@HallowMoonshadow Yeah, it has 6 chapters and a epilogue. I just started Chapter 6, so I should be done with it at some point late in the week. I thought I was closer to being done before about 2 weeks ago, but I didn't realize Chapter 5 was quite so huge.

Thanks. Obviously I do too, but I'm pretty sure I will given what fans have said about the ending (just that it's really good, not that I actually know what happens thankfully).

And here's the part where I say I didn't think the ending was all that special either @KilloWertz

Not bad or anything and fitted the game just fine but I was a bit "Yup. That sure did happen".

YS VIII was definitely a game I wanted to like more then I actually did. A damn shame but it's not like I hated my time with it. 7/10 sorta vibes if I had to grade it.

Characters are charming, some plot points had me roll my eyes, combat felt a bit button mashy and got a bit stale after too long.

I prefered Falcom's Trails Of Cold Steel 1 myself (my first Falcom game) more then YS VIII personally though your millage may vary with the cast of teenagers and military school setting

@HallowMoonshadow And here's the part where I say you don't know what you're talking about...

Seriously though, while it has been a game I have loved for the most part so far, obviously not everybody will feel the same. I'll never understand the appeal of dying 50,000 times in a game like people do in Souls games or the Rogue genre, but a lot of people love them.

I can understand the combat to an extent when you fight the same things over and over again and such, but at least it's better than the combat system in some other JRPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles from Nintendo, and I did like the bit of strategy they threw in with Dana when you switch between versions of her. It's not great, but the characters, story, and soundtrack are so good (in my opinion) that the combat system can be somewhat weaker and still be fine.

I will try the Cold Steel games someday. As long as the characters are written well, I shouldn't have a problem with the fact that they are teenagers. Can't be as bad as the teenagers in the real world. I plan on playing Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure before I dive into the Cold Steel series though.

Never played Xenoblade but the combat looks a bit complicated and messy imo.

The Dana forms were really cool though that's 1 aspect I actually really enjoyed about the combat and wished there was a bit of it. By the end of the game I was actually using an all girl team of Riccota, Laxia and Dana.

I played Cold Steel in 2020 so the recent Trails of Zero and Azure were still Japan exclusive on the PSP or whatever otherwise I would've given them a shot before Cold Steel 😄

@HallowMoonshadow It's a bit too simple in my opinion. Everything is an auto attack, but you have the option of choosing what each one is (the reason for the icons at the bottom of the screen). There were points in the first game where I literally just ran up to enemies and just let the game just auto attack the whole time when facing easy enemies. There are many similarities in Ys VIII to that, but imo Ys VIII does a lot of stuff better. Side quests are a lot better (I only did a fraction of them in XC because they sucked) and you have more control over combat. The former was one really disappointing thing when I played Xenoblade Chronicles.

I can understand never playing Xenoblade Chronicles though if you are a PlayStation only gamer. I am for the most part, but did buy a Switch and that was the only game I ever actually finished on it (I likely should have never bought one). I'll stay away from that spoiler for now, btw.

Understandable since the Cold Steel games have been available for years (at least some of them). Zero and Azure I think are technically set before those games, so now that I have the option, I might as well play them beforehand. Doesn't hurt that they are both supposed to be pretty good JRPGs.

@Fight_Teza_Fight. Iam very glad that I have gone into the game basically blind. I have in general come to the realisation that it takes a lot of online reading and youtube watching for a game to be spoild for me hehe. I in general try to avoid spoilers if I can.

Got the new game trial of Sonic Frontiers for PS4 and just finished my playtime a few minutes ago. As someone who has played a ton of the modern games (If they are even called that anymore cause most of them are over a decade old), this was much different. I played the dinky 15 minute demo version on Switch. I didn’t get past the intro bit and into the open world, despite skipping all cutscenes and blasting through the digital levels. So when I noticed an hour long trial for this game popped up on PS, I gave it a whirl. It wasn’t off to the best start. I skipped the intro scenes and blazed past 1-1 Green Hill. And then came the Data Copy. I didn’t know if I was supposed to download the dlc for an hour long trial game beforehand or not, so I let the Data Copy burn through my time. By the time the game actually started, I had between 40-35 minutes remaining. That was probably my fault. Since I did the intro part on the Switch demo before, I got through quite fast. By the time I got to the open world, I had just under 25 minutes remaining. I dunno what the heck happened with that Azura boss thing, but that took me so long. I couldn’t properly lock on even after continuing pressing square while the prompt was up. I just kept going into the sky and falling back down. I finally got to work but then was killed, so I restarted that fight. I got the first arm down, but the other two took stupid amounts of time. I had 10 minutes left by the time that thing was dead. Really clunky bossfight. Then I ran around a bit, fiddled with the Jukebox (which is a sick update by the way, planet wisp rules) and found Amy. Got her out of the prison thing, and was told to grab the heart things. Went after that giant titan thinking a big fight would happen and got sent flying. Then the trial expired. Maybe I just suck, but I wasn’t a huge fan of that demo. Does the game get better or something?

@RogerRoger yeah, I wondered because the game had great reviews across the board. I’m a sucker for Sonic games, I’ll play a lot of them from the best like Generations and the genesis trilogy to the downright mediocre like 06 and Forces. So I was confused as to why the first bit of Frontiers was kind of a drag. But if the rest of the game is as good as it looks and sounds, the money is still on the table for purchasing this, when the sales are just low enough. Thanks again for the reassurance!

I've nearly finished Disc 1 in The Legend Of Dragoon having got past the return to Hellena Prison and I'm now at Kazas & fighting my way through the Black Castle to fight Emperor Doel.

Took me a little longer then I would've liked to get this far thanks to the rather limited free time I've had. But still a rather snappy 13 hours compared to most JRPG's and SO much has happened in that run time that it's kind of insane.

I'm really going to try to use everyone in the party this time around rather then falling back on Dart (whom you annoyingly can't take out the party), Rose (My favourite character) and the energetic Meru.

Dart, Lavitz, Rose and Haschel are going well at the moment but Shana... Ugh Shana.

She's really annoying thanks to a combination of her being rather squishy with low hp & defense. An absolutely pathetic attack stat & no additions which gimp her physical capabilities even further.

Plus with most of your magic being items in an inventory with only 32 slots it only makes her even less viable to use early game. Doubly so when Rose has a really impressive magic stat at the beginning (Though Shana will vastly overtake her in due time!).

Doesn't help matters that Shana temporarily leaves the party early on too and is several levels below the rest of the team when returning (Bosses in LoD are the only fights that give worthwhile experience points).

Thankfully with one single boss I managed to jump her up 3 levels and reach where everyone else is!

As for more overall thoughts the translation is worse then I remember it being and the overworld models can be a bit rough. Especially with NPC's.

The pre-rendered backgrounds are utterly sublime though and the soundtrack is top notch!

Maybe I should upload a few screenshots to the thread but it's a bit hard to get some real nice shots out a PS1 RPG

I'm also one of those people who generally likes everyone in the party to be around the same level @RogerRoger so it's kinda annoying when Dart can't be taken out and will be vastly overlevelled to the rest of the cast.

Sooooo... I kinda had to kill him in order for Shana to get ALL the exp (As EXP is a shared pool dived between the three party members rather then everyone getting the full amount) to mass level her

Apparently Shana's the character to use for speedrunning though because of her ridiculous magic stat and thanks to magic being very viable in LoD compared to other RPG's.

... Also I might be being rather thorough and using all the characters for impressions/review purposes? Not promising anything but who knows?

As for the translation? It can be a little Google translate if you know what I mean with it being robotic and literal. Sentences can run over with a lack of syntax and all that jazz too.

So it can be a bit hit and miss on whether meaning or character's and personality is lost/muddied. There were defintely better translations/localisations at the time.

The voice acting meanwhile (Yes this PS1 JRPG game has some limited voice acting) is amazing. Whilst there is actually a decent voice or two... It's terrible otherwise but in THE best way possible

I did what had to be done

The VA is only in the CGI cutscenes and for attack call outs.

They call out the additions (your main attack in battles) when you sucessfully complete them. I was gonna link a video yesterday showcasing this (and I heard the Japanese versions for the first time which were equally amazing) but it did have spoilers in so I'll see about finding something.

I'll at least do an impressions piece after finishing off disc one and plop something showcasing the VA in there

Just finished Resident Evil 4 Remake. The original one was a masterpiece and this one is masterpiece as well.

I played it on a PS4 Pro. Yes, the graphics are downgraded compared to the PS5/PC but it was so enjoyable to play on performance settings. I had no issues at all! No slowdowns or crashes! No updates either, played it only from the disc installation!

I’ve been playing Valkyria Chronicles, The Messenger & still efootball.

I’m terrible at Valkyria Chronicles. The missions are rather long & even if it looks like you’re doing alright everything can change in one bad turn. Also when playing the map first time there’s no way of telling when an ‘event’ is triggered & completely changes the battlefield.

The Messenger is stunning. I’m only a couple of hours in, but I can see this game being one of my favourites for the year.

Efootball at this point will probably be my most played game of all time. Been playing it everyday for about a month now.
Even though I’ve completed the regular pass (100 matches) weeks ago I log in, get the bonus & play a couple of matches if no events are on.
It literally has me going through the motions as I’m eagerly awaiting for the next division & the new passes to refresh.