Interesting fact as well, the voice actress for Amecia is Jill Warwick in final fantasy 16 and the Hugo voice actor is Joshua Redfield in the same game
@QualityGeezer Ah, nice! I didn’t know about the voice performers. One of my biggest complaints (and it was nit-picking at that) was the Hugo voice actor in the first game. He just had moments of grating whining and inconsistent emotionally. Amecia’s VA in the first game was great though and more than made up for it. I’m playing FF16 now and so far have been pleased overall with the voice acting, outside of a few of the NPCs and lesser characters (like Goetz and Annabella) but Jill and Joshua seem to have been amongst the good ones.
Looking forward to playing Requiem. My other complaint about the first game was the ending where things got really supernatural when I didn’t think it served the story setting quite. Hopefully this sequel doubles down on the historical plague setting and the the relationship building between siblings and less about the supernatural aspects.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution yeah the voice acting in Final Fantasy 16 is great. Ralph Ineson who voices Cid is a British cult hero, one of those instantly reganisable voices
@QualityGeezer I really love Cid’s gravely voice. I didn’t know it was a famous British actor, but he does have a great unique sound. I had an early complaint that his voice sounded too old for Cid’s physical appearance. Looks like Ineson is 54. So either they needed to make Cid appear slightly older or give him a younger voice. It helps that Cid is a chronic smoker to account for some of the harshness of the voice, but it still was slightly like the voice was overpowering the CGI performance and rendition. Regardless, Ineson did a fantastic job, as did the actor who portrayed Clive.
@Th3solution yeah he's one of those actors who is never the star but he's in everything from Harry Potter, Lord of the rings, game of thrones to the office (UK version) due to his unique voice and the fact he's a very dependable actor. No surprise he does alot of voice over work in adverts as well with that voice.
I agree about Ben Starr who voiced Clive, it's a great performance and no coincidence he won so many awards for his portrayal! Well deserved
I had only three days to try and finish Artful Escape but couldn't and I have been traveling since, but I plan to finish this beautiful game when I finally return home this weekend after almost a month of being away from my PS5.
I'm excited for A Plague Tale because it's been on my list for years. This year, I want to commit to being active with the monthly games because I haven't played enough of a variety of games so I'm excited.
February nominations: Unsure if these have already been selected but throwing these into the fray.
1) Spider-Man: Miles Morales
2) Humanity
3) Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Is there also a possibility of a game spanning two months?
For next month, I'd put votes in for) sea of stars and b) teardown. I'll probably give this month a miss, just because I never played the first and I think that I still want to give it a try rather than spoil the story by watching a youtube to play requiem.
@SillyBoyJudas We actually played Humanity for the club a couple months ago. It was quite good though! It you like puzzle games and need something a little different from the average fare, it’s worth a try.
@R1spam Perhaps you could play APT: Innocence while we’re playing Requiem. There may be some cross discussion about what happens in the first game and the gameplay discussion will probably have overlap too. Anyway, just an idea. But even if it’s later, you should give it a go, I really liked it. A poor man’s The Last of Us in many ways, but it does enough to distinguish itself.
——————
As far as February, how about Life is Strange True Colors. And I’d get behind Sea of Stars as a second choice.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
No pressure to read, of course. Be curious to hear your thoughts if you decide to give it a go. At around a 12 hr play time, it’s not too heavy of an investment.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution cheers, just had a read (gave the story section a miss though), great review! Do you remember how generous the checkpointing was? Instant fail stealth sections where you lose lots of progress is a no go!!
@R1spam Thanks!
The checkpointing is pretty generous as I recall. Like in TLoU, you’ll often come upon a room or small area of enemies, then if you die you just go back to the entrance of the room or area. There’s one annoying part toward the last of the game (you’ll probably know it when you get there) that people complain loudly about because it’s a little “unfair” and you’ll probably die several times until you learn a few patterns and get a little bit lucky, but for me it didn’t ruin things. But I read a few people who flamed the game just because of that one encounter. And even that one only puts you back a couple minutes. The final boss encounter also had me dying a couple times and restarting the boss fight but it was just standard video game stuff. Not like a Demon’s Souls trek to get back to the boss, it just restarts at the beginning of the fight like a normal game.
You shouldn’t have any huge loss of progress in any section that I remember.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
I’ve been able to spend a few hours (about 6 to be specific, according to my PS5’s timekeeper) with A Plague Tale: Requiem and it’s been a really great time so far. I thought it might be time for some first impressions.
I’ve just finished chapter 4, and so I’m well into the meat of the story and gameplay. APT Requiem definitely has a familiar feeling. It plays almost identically to the first game with a few small exceptions. The areas and enemy encounters are more varied and feel bigger. Some of these combat and stealth scenarios have an impressive amount of depth and varied approaches to get through. The 3 tiered leveling up of skills is interesting too, whereby you gain levels in the types of conflict resolution that you use the most.
It’s quite fun and I have mostly been taking a stealth approach, but I appreciate the fact this game has more options to kill enemies if desired. I am a little annoyed at Lucas’s constant preaching to me and giving me grief whenever I choose to kill people, though. 😒
The puzzling out of how to approach things is really satisfying. I really enjoy thinking through how I want to traverse a space and dispatch enemies. Shall I use resources to extinguish a fire to get rid of a human enemy, or should I light more fires to take an alternate route around the patrol path…? 🤔
The story is good, and although it doesn’t open quite as strong as the first game, it surpasses it pretty quickly, as far as storyline. Obviously since we know what we know about the plague, it jumps right into the action, which I like. I also feel like the sibling kinship between Amicia and Hugo is even better this go around. They really have a sweet relationship, especially Amicia toward her little brother. I think it might resonate better for those who have a younger sibling, but I just think their bond is so charming, even though Hugo is still a trite grating from time to time, although certainly less annoying than in the first game. (Small spoiler incoming from characters from the first game) — The children’s mother has to be the world’s worst mother though, sending her young kids out into war and plague quarantine zones to bring back herbs and run errands. 😅 She doesn’t even seem to be that worried about Amicia at all, despite her risking life and limb against soldiers and pestilence. So strange how they both nurse over and cherish Hugo, but seem to hate each other.
The small moments between Hugo and Amicia are the central part though. The loving and pure sister-little brother relationship is deftly contrasted by the horror of blood, death, murder, and disease. It’s a great juxtaposition of themes. Picking flowers and playing games one minute, and walking through entrails and setting people on fire the next.
As far as the technical side of things, the game is gorgeous. The facial animations continue to be the weakest part, but the textures and environments are so fetching and sometimes I’m pausing just to soak up the scenery. I’ve used the photo mode a lot to capture some of the places that impressed me. A special shout-out to the reflections and water effects. I’m playing in quality mode but to me it feels faster than 30 fps. I notice that my TV (an LG OLED C2) is saying it’s running in 120 hz VRR, so maybe I’m getting over 30fps at times. I don’t know. I’ll play around with the 60 fps and see how it’s different, but I’m honestly happy with the default fidelity setting.
I did have one crash. In chapter 4 when you get the tar creation ability, Lucas tosses you the ingredients and when I opened the wheel to make the tarit froze and I had to do a shut-down of the game from the PS5 menu. When I reloaded the save (which was right where I left off) it worked fine afterward. Weird.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Not to dominate the discussion, (I do wonder how everyone else might be getting along with the game) but I did get one more chapter in last night and continue to be impressed. Chapter 5 has some really interesting puzzles and at the end introduces the crossbow! I started to go full Rambo style shooting and killing enemies, until I realized the crossbow ammo is really rare. 😅 So I had to improvise after that since I used it all up.
The chapter ends in an interesting way. There was the bombastic adrenaline rush of the end of Chapter 4, and now it feels a little like Frodo and Sam leaving the Fellowship because they think they’ll be better off alone 😄
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Just started this (had to finish Yakuza LAD first) and for what is supposed to be an AA game the quality and scope is very impressive.
I did play the previous game, which is essential to play before this imo, and this seems quite the leap especially with the show pieces.
I'm up to chapter 5 and playing stealthy with minimal kills, or least trying to in order to get the sneaky trophy out of the way before NG+. Thankfully checkpoints are quite frequent which imo is needed for stealth games.
Great game so far and can't wait for play more. Really great to see some (fairly) linear story driven games and it seems an age since we had a decent one.
Idk how this thread works but I am playing Requiem currently, so I thought I'd check in
Currently starting chapter 9 and I've been enjoying it so far - you could say it's a typical "familiar but bigger and better" kinda sequel.
I like that Amicia has multiple companions throughout rather than mostly just Hugo. My only mild complaint is that there were some sections that feel like they should be doable completely stealthy but they actually seem impossible to complete that way. Might be a skill issue
Edit: as soon as I complain about not being able to sneak my way through some parts, there's a whole section where sneaking is the only option
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