Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

Finished all three DLC packs for The Evil Within and so I decided to write down my impressions of them. All in all, I think the additional content was absolutely worth it, even for €10. The first two DLCs are basically the main story but from the perspective of another character. It's obviously not the entire game, but it shows the moments that you didn't see with the other character. And honestly, I think you really need to play these two DLC packs in order to fully understand the story of the main game. Because here's the thing, it genuinely feels like this content was cut out from the main game. The reason I say this is because there was so much additional information and lore that wasn't in the base game that probably should've been. For example, the DLC brings up the name of the corporation behind everything. But I don't think their name is even mentioned in the main story. Imagine if the first Resident Evil game came out today and no information was given about Umbrella at all, not even its name. That's what it feels like with the DLC for The Evil Within. Information that should be crucial isn't even in the main game and you have to play the DLC in order to learn it. It's just so bizarre to me.

Other than that, I enjoyed the first two DLCs a lot. Instead of having a lot of different weapons at your disposal like in the main game, you have most of the time no weapons at all and have to rely on pure stealth in order to get through the levels. New mechanics include hiding behind cover and luring enemies to you and then running away so that you can get pass them. This was interesting when you could lure them into a room and then lock the door so that they were stuck in there. Over time, you'll find axes that can be used as one-hit kills when sneaking up behind enemies. You could also lure enemies using bottles and throwing them off buildings. So overall, I highly enjoyed the stronger focus on stealth in these DLCs. Not to mention that there was a larger emphasis on puzzles this time around, which reminded me a lot of Resident Evil. In other words, if you want a fresh experience after playing through the main game, the first two DLCs are definitely the way to go.

The third DLC is very different. It lets you play as one of the bosses from the main game called "The Executioner" and you get to absolutely destroy other enemies. Imagine if you could play as Mr. X in Resident Evil, it's kinda like that. It's basically like a fun extra thing and a good way to wind down after having played through the main game plus its two other DLCs. I had a lot of fun with it even though it was only an hour long. However, it's meant to be played through multiple times so it's kinda like the arcade mode of this game.

The other two DLCs were around three hours long each, so you're looking at a total of roughly 27 hours to get through the base game and its three DLCs, so there's a lot of content to be had here, especially for a horror game. I personally had a blast with The Evil Within plus the DLC and I highly recommend to check them out as long as you have a lot of time to set aside for this title.

@RogerRoger Yeah, I think they were definitely planned. For example, I remember one cutscene in the main game where a character said a line that to me at the time didn't make any sense. Then when I played the DLC, that line made much more sense from that person's perspective. Not to mention that the main game didn't have much story to begin with. Typically with Resident Evil titles, you always learn what's truly going on towards the end of the game when you enter the final area, kinda like the lab in RE2. But in The Evil Within, you were just as clueless at the end as when you started. I mean yeah, you get to find out what's actually happening, but you never get to know why unless you play the DLC and that's what bothers me.

I think what would've been nice is if they had released a complete edition of the game and integrated the DLC with the main story, kinda like in the definitive edition of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. After you've cleared a specific chapter in the main game, you then get to play as the other character, and then when you're done there you switch back to the main story and so on. That would've made the story a lot more seamless and easier to understand.

@LtSarge Kinda weird they never made a GOTY version of this with all the DLC, especially if was the pre-planned sort that tacks on additional information about the main story and was probably originally planned for integration into the game proper.

Anyway, thanks for reviewing the DLC! I usually ignore it for most games, so I'll make sure not to make that mistake here if I can get a good price on it.

@Ralizah Yeah, I think this game would've benefited a lot from a complete edition besides the DLC as it apparently launched in a poor state, especially when it came to the frame rate. I never experienced any issues playing it on my base PS4 thanks to the patches, so it would've been nice to have them on a physical copy. But alas..

Good call, I definitely think you should play the DLC if you're interested in learning more about the things that happened behind the scenes during the first game. On top of that, I read that it's very important to play the DLC before going into the second The Evil Within game, so there's also that.

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Time to Completion: 40+ hours

Atlus' JRPG catalog on the Playstation 2 was legendary. While an early and influential force in the Japanese RPG scene since 1987, their presence worldwide was largely muted until the 2004 release in the Americas of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne on the PS2 (and its 2005 PAL release as Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call). More specifically, this was actually a localization of the Maniax edition of Nocturne, an updated re-release of the original game that launched in Japan back in 2003. Despite being the first title in the mainline SMT series to make its way overseas, it was enough of a hit outside of Japan to ensure that Atlus' subsequent games all made the jump to the West, which, aside from a freak title or two, has remained true to this day, with Atlus being one of the most consistently reliable localizers in the industry. While not the first game in the series to transition to 3D graphics presented in a third-person perspective (that honor belongs to the dubious and still unlocalized Xbox-exclusive game Shin Megami Tensei NINE), Nocturne was the first title developed by them that popularized the (then) modern embrace of home console technology, and, as such, it stands out as being unique from the Nintendo handheld-bound mainline games that released decades later on the Nintendo DS and 3DS. Interestingly, this dual-lineage will be fully married together by the upcoming Shin Megami Tensei V, which is releasing on a handheld Nintendo device but is also the most technically ambitious title Atlus will have released in multiple console generations. But that's a discussion for later in the year. For now, I wish to discuss the 2021 release of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster on the Nintendo Switch (also available on PC and PS4).

Shin Megami Tensei has never been a series known for its cheery storylines, but, even by series standards, this one is a little on the dark side. You begin as an unnamed Japanese teenager who is off to meet his friends Chiaki and Isamu at the hospital so they can visit their hospitalized homeroom teacher together. It's not long before it becomes apparent that things are very off, however, with reports of cult violence and eerie portents of apocalyptic events to come being prophesied in an occult magazine that was stuffed into your hands by a strange man named Hijiri. The apocalypse happens surprisingly quickly in this one: you're barely 40 minutes into the game before you discover that a rogue member of the Ring of Gaea (a cult first introduced in the first game in the series) has somehow managed to trigger an apocalyptic event known as the Conception, which almost immediately annihilates all life on Earth and causes the city of Tokyo to twist itself into a sphere around a bizarre, sentient star-like entity known as Kagutsuchi. In order to help him to survive and fulfill his destiny, an eerie, ghost-like boy infects the protagonist with a parasite (a "magatama") that transforms him into a half-demon entity known as the Demi-Fiend.

The game's setup is... hard to explain, and little of it is presented in a way that would make sense to the player. This will go on to become a hallmark of Nocturne's storytelling, as it very much situates you in the shoes of someone who has absolutely no idea what is going on in the world around them. Other characters do, however, and have obvious agendas throughout the game. Moreso than almost any other RPG I've played to date, Nocturne eschews ordinary narrative development and requires the player to piece together what is happening throughout the game themselves, forcing them to interrogate their environments for clues and grapple with the bizarre language of the apocalyptic world they now find themselves in. This almost plotless, art-house take on the SMT formula has proven to be frustrating for some, but it also gives the game a mystique that is, quite frankly, nearly unrivaled in the medium.

For the purpose of this review, however, it's worth exploring the narrative elements of this game in a bit more depth. Waking up in the hospital post-infection, you find yourself in a dead world full of demons and wandering ghosts. The game doesn't exactly offer you a tutorial, but it does attempt to ease you into things: the ghosts in the hospital offer friendly advice about the basic mechanics of the game, and the first demon you'll recruit is a friendly Pixie who asks you to accompany her to a late game location, where the rest of the Pixie race currently resides. Making your way out into Tokyo, the once bustling city has been transformed into something resembling a desert. You discover that this spherical realm is called a Vortex World, a sort of embryonic land whose shape will be determined by the will of one of the few humans who still live in that world (you, your friends, your teacher, and a few other characters who had all gathered in the hospital prior to the end of the world). In the Vortex World, a human with a sufficiently coherent ideology (called a "Reason" in this game) can gain power through the accumulation of spiritual energy (called "Magatsuhi") and summon a Demonic Sponsor who will work with them to bring their ideal into being.

Reasons are this game's equivalent of the traditional alignment system, and they really stand out from the somewhat rote law/neutral/chaos alignments found in other SMT games. The game features six routes, three of which align with the ideologies trumpeted by the game's Reason Holders. The first Reason is that of Yosuga, which is the most traditional of the three and aligns closely with chaos alignments from previous games in its pitiless strength worship and disdain for compassion, authority, and any form of weakness. Standing as the counterpoint to this is the Reason of Shijima, which seeks to promote a form of universal consciousness where all striving, will, and sense of identity is eliminated from sentient life in the universe. Finally, the Reason of Musubi envisions a world founded on a basis of profound metaphysical solipsism, where all individuals are the gods of their own universe and never come into contact with anyone or anything that isn't an extension of themselves, rendering genuine human contact impossible alongside compromise and social alienation.

All of the Reasons have flaws, and all of them are, interestingly, reflections of deficiencies in the people who conceived of them (there's an inherent irony in the anti-individualistic Reason of Shijima's actualization only being made possible because a single man decided to defy the universe around him and trigger the conception in the first place; the person who promotes the Reason of Yosuga, meanwhile, is someone who was always weak herself), but they manage to be compelling philosophies in their own right, and the Reason Holders go out of their way to sway your character toward their way of thinking throughout. Which leads me into something gameplay-related I'd like to praise the game for: it's much easier to go for specific routes in this game than in previous entries, because instead of adding on or taking off invisible alignment points, the routes instead are broadly determined by clear dialogue choices made in obviously important conversations throughout the game with Reason Holders.

So, Nocturne immediately distinguishes itself thematically from every other game in the series, but its mechanical evolutions are, in my opinion, the reason the game is a classic of the genre, and arguably the most important entry in the series. The most influential change Nocturne ushered in, by far, was its introduction of the press-turn battle system, variants of which have been integrated into almost every MegaTen game released since then, including the "one more" battle system in Persona 3 - 5. Previously, SMT games featured somewhat mindless, Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest-esque battle systems where team composition didn't matter too much as long as you had high level demons with access to powerful skills. That all changed with Nocturne's battle system, which famously made it where you gain or lose turns during a round depending on how well you play. Hitting enemy weaknesses, nulling/absorbing their attacks, or getting critical hits will increase the number of times you can act, while you'll lose turns if an enemy nulls/absorbs your attacks or your character misses. Here's the brilliant thing: enemies play by the same rules, broadly speaking, and can easily sweep your team if you play poorly or don't keep a diverse assortment of demons in your party.

Manipulating the number of press turns available to you in a round is an entire metagame in itself that dramatically changes how you approach team composition, skill loadouts, etc. because they all feed in directly to how capable you are in battle. This is why, for example, having good buffs and debuffs isn't just a convenience like in most JRPGs, but is actually a matter of life or death, because it'll be difficult to nigh on impossible to defeat certain bosses in this game without being able to weaken their stats and increase your own. This change to a deeply tactical combat system dramatically affects the way the rest of the game is played, and makes the monster collecting elements more important than ever.

Not coincidentally, Atlus really doubled down on the Pokemon-ish qualities in this game. Two elements in particular stand out in this regard. The first is the introduction of the Demonic Compendium, which was missing in previous games but has since become a series mainstay. The easiest way to describe it is as an upgraded, demonic Pokedex: all of the demons that have been 'collected' in the past will be entered into the compendium and, for a price, players will be able to re-summon them, which helps dramatically when it comes to experimenting with demonic fusion and creating new types of demons. Like a pokedex, you can also read about the lore behind each of the demons when they gain an entry in your compendium. The other huge change is that certain demons in the game are now capable of evolving into stronger forms when they've hit a certain level threshold. Evolving weak demons into stronger forms is actually the only way players will be able to obtain certain demons in the game, which can't be obtained through fusions.

I want to briefly acknowledge a really helpful change made in the remastered version of this game. In the PS2 original, demon skill inheritance through fusions randomized the skills drawn from the progenitor demons, so that it was often difficult to re-roll demon fusions in such a way that you wound up with exactly the spread of skills you wanted on them. It was a needless feature that made the game more artificially difficult than it needed to be. Nocturne HD addresses this by allowing players to simply choose which skills their demons inherit. It's a small change, but the impact on player satisfaction is, IMO, immense, and it was really the one huge change I hoped to see included in this remaster.

Previous Shin Megami Tensei games were fundamentally dungeon crawlers with semi-open world maps, and Nocturne is no different, although the heavy science-fiction/technological element has been replaced, since there's nothing resembling modern civilization in the Vortex World. While I praised SMT I's accessible dungeon design, the same can't be said here. The labyrinths you'll explore in Nocturne are truly an obnoxious mess of traps, teleporter puzzles, dead ends, etc. that made them consistently aggravating to engage with. Granted, there's more design diversity on display here than in previous games, so you get some interesting locations like Kabukicho Prison, where you have to engage in a form of gravity manipulation to progress, or the Diet Building (far and away the best dungeon in the game), where you'll have to navigate visual illusions through a labyrinthine series of hallways and rooms. But, in general, the game finds itself on the wrong side of fun vs unfun gimmicks. Although it can still safely boast better dungeon design than the truly terrible examples provided in Persona 3, Persona 4, and Digital Devil Saga 2 on the same system.

This tedium extends to the gigantic Kalpas in the Labyrinth of Amala as well, although that requires an elaborate explanation on its own. The Amala Labyrinth is a multi-floored dungeon that can be accessed throughout the game and was added in the Maniax re-release of the game. The player will be tasked with seeking out (mostly) optional boss fights with Fiends who hold magical menorahs that must be used to unlock various floors of this dungeon. Each successive floor, or Kalpa, in the Amala Labyrinth is progressively more abusive and designed to push the player to their limit with needlessly gigantic layouts, dead-ends, teleporters, poison floors, cursed rooms, and, eventually, excessively powerful random encounters. Now, you could just ignore most of this optional dungeon entirely, but at least one of the endings (the famous True Demon Ending) is locked behind it.

To digress for a moment, what's more alarming about the True Demon Ending to me is that a massive amount of in-game content is locked behind pursuing it. Moreover, the game sort of betrays its own cryptic approach to storytelling by including infodumps throughout the Labyrinth to help the player understand what is happening in the story (frankly, if Atlus cared about the storytelling in this game, they should have done a better job of integrating it into the narrative proper instead of dumping heaps of exposition onto the player in an optional dungeon). Either way, what you end up with is, from a gameplay and story comprehension perspective, is an almost objectively superior route to the game, which is a terrible approach in a game that emphasizes multiple endings and player choice. With that said, the first ending I obtained in the game, the Freedom ending, is the one that most personally resonated with me, and I don't appreciate having to replay a massive chunk of the game in order to see the additional content locked behind the True Demon Ending.

The flow of the game itself is one largely driven by the broadly linear layout of the overworld, given the way explicit narrative elements are de-emphasized. It definitely works, but, moreso than in the first game, there were definitely moments where I found myself wondering how to progress the storyline and found myself wandering between different locations. As with other games in the series, going back to the SNES original, there's a form of fast travel across the world map: in this case, the Amala Network, a sort of abstract passageway that directs the flow of Magatsuhi across the Vortex World, takes the place of terminals, so backtracking isn't usually too painful.

Given the somewhat plotless and abstract feel of the experience and the lack of sympathetic primary characters (all of your friends seem to grow progressively more insane and inhuman as the games wears on), things would feel distinctly lonely without any characters to actually care about. And, to be honest, there aren't a lot, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to mention a race of creatures in this game that rank among my favorite in the series. These are the Manikins, a race of involantarily creepy, yet almost universally good-natured golems/mud dolls you'll encounter throughout the game. These poor things are weak and, resultantly, are subject to awful abuses and enslavement by more powerful demons, yet, with only a few exceptions, they still seem to largely maintain their humanity and strive to create a place of their own in the world. In a place as harsh as the Vortex World, it's nice to meet creatures with a bit of humanity to them. What also helps is the game's subdued and dark but definitely present sense of humor. As in the original, these most frequently crop up in often absurd interactions you have with demons during negotiations. But there's also a self-aware stupidity to certain elements and bits of NPC dialogue in the game that really help to lighten the frequently grim mood over time.

And I guess this is where we inevitably transition to the criticisms that are to be had of this particular version of the game. Because, in truth, while I enjoy it, this release is deeply flawed. Nocturne HD is billed as a "remaster" of the game for modern consoles, and that might technically be true, but only in the most strictly literal sense of the word. While the resolution has clearly been boosted to work with HDTVs and the image quality has very slightly been touched up in spots (I'm noticing reflections on surfaces that weren't present in the original PS2 version of the game), this is still very clearly a PS2 game that has been ported over almost wholesale. The game is replete with the same low-resolution textures and chunky character models from the original release of the game, which, frankly, don't look all that great on modern systems. This profoundly lazy approach hits the game's once attractive pre-rendered cutscenes even worse, as they've been left untouched and thus play in all their 480i glory at a 4:3 aspect ratio, which means they don't fill the screen. Atlus' solution to this is to apply this horrid blurring effect to the sides of the screen when cutscenes play out, which looks far worse than if they'd just opted for black stripes or something.

The area where the presentation succeeds and fails the most in this remaster is in the sound department, however. Atlus didn't opt to use high-quality samples or re-orchestrate the battle themes in this game, so they sound horribly compressed, like they did in the original PS2 version of the game. It's truly jarring when some of the best tracks in this game sound like they're being heard on the other side of a particularly thick wall. This lack of basic concern for a major component of the audio experience is weird when you consider the fact that Atlus went to the trouble to adding a TON of voice acting to this game in both English and Japanese. And it's... pretty good voice acting. The lack of voice acting in Nocturne always stood out as a notable deficiency when compared to Atlus' other releases on the system, so Nocturne HD finally puts the game on par with other classic releases in this regard, but I truly don't understand why they'd invest in hiring multiple actors to record a ton of lines in multiple languages, but wouldn't spend a little bit of money to make sure the battle music sounds decent.

Nocturne's soundtrack isn't up to the standards of IV and IV: Apocalypse, but it is very good, full of atmospheric rock music and mood-setting tunes, along with a true banger of an opening theme. I'll go ahead and link some of my favorite pieces in this game:

While little more than a disappointing remaster released at premium price on the PS4 for Playstation owners, this version of the game actually holds a lot more significance for Nintendo fans of Atlus. Nocturne is still readily available on the PS2 and (digitally) on PS3, but, despite the series seemingly being married to Nintendo hardware for the foreseeable future, this was the only mainline title in the series that had never released on Nintendo hardware in some form. It was also the only game that had never released at some point on a handheld gaming device. Nocturne HD represents both the portable debut and Nintendo debut of this classic game, then.

With that said, returning to my reluctant indictment of the laziness of this release, the game weirdly has some performance issues in the Nintendo Switch version. When the game first launched in Japan, this version was plagued with long load times and severe framerate dips in dungeons, which took months to iron out until we got the fairly stable build we enjoyed at launch in the West. But even at launch in the Americas, Nocturne HD still stutters in certain situations, especially when docked. It's bizarre to think that a barely touched up PS2 game doesn't run smoothly on vastly more powerful hardware. It also bears mentioning that at launch in Japan, this version of the game was even missing the improvement to demon skill inheritance I mentioned earlier. It was only included in a patch many months later after significant player pushback on the state of the release.

The ultimate slap in the face for fans has been pricing and DLC practices. On top of everything else, Atlus had the nerve to both charge nearly full price for this release AND include a ton of day one DLC for it that should have been included by default, including content that was originally in the PS2 version of the game! Even worse is the way they tied early access to the game to the purchase of an expensive $70 "digital deluxe edition" of the game like they had previous with Persona 5 Strikers.

It's a shame, really. This game deserves better. The art design is amazing, the battle system was revolutionary, and it represented a fresh new take on the already innovative SMT formula. Despite the nasty tone this piece adopted near the end, I can't even say I regret buying it at launch, because, however repulsive Atlus' approach to this remaster was, the game is a stone-cold classic that was begging to be re-released on modern devices. With voice acting, native portability on the Switch, and with minor quality-of-life improvements, this is still the best way to experience a classic of the medium, although, unfortunately, it's one I could only recommend with certain reservations.

6.5/10

@Ralizah Very informative review, I highly enjoyed reading it. I think it's a bit of a shame that Atlus didn't put enough effort into making this a better remaster in terms of the cutscenes, the audio and so on. Not to mention that they're charging a premium price for it. Despite that, I still thought a lot of the things you mentioned, especially the gameplay, are appealing to me. The way you described it, it sounds like the game plays pretty much like the Persona games and I'm very familiar with that system, so this should be right up my alley. However, I'm not sure that this should be my first SMT game. I tend to play games in release order, which is why I was interested in playing Nocturne as my first SMT title. But stuff like poor remastering and the seemingly annoying dungeon designs kinda puts me off as I want to have the best first experience with a series that I'm starting out with. That's not to say that I'm never going to play the game, it's just that I don't think I want it to be my first SMT game. Right now, I still think I want SMT IV to be my first game in the series. I've actually been wanting to buy it for a long time now on the 3DS but it never goes on sale, but maybe I should just buy it for €20 that it costs now and start playing it. Maybe that will entice me to eventually buy Nocturne down the line as well, but hopefully it will go down in price in the meantime.

@LtSarge Thanks a lot! Yeah, if you've played a modern Persona game, it should be pretty simple to transition over to SMT in terms of the battle system and demon fusing. SMT just tends to be more punishing in terms of damage multipliers and press turn antics (i.e. if an attack bounces off an enemy or you miss, you'll lose multiple press turns).

SMT IV was actually my first SMT game, and my third MegaTen game (after Persona 4 Golden and Devil Survivor: Overclocked). It has a punishing beginning and first dungeon, but if you can push through that, the rest of the game is pretty fantastic. Mechanically, SMT IV: Apocalypse is easily the best transition point for someone going from Persona to SMT, but it does assume familiarity with SMT IV's characters and settings, which makes it less ideal as a first game from a narrative perspective.

As much as I like Nocturne, I probably wouldn't recommend it as a first SMT experience either, tbh. Pretty much every aspect of the series was improved upon in more recent games, which hopefully carries over to the new game releasing in November as well. There are certain things it does do better than every game in the series as well, though. If you enjoy whatever game you start with, it's definitely one worth playing at some point in your life. Atlus discounts its games pretty heavily in the States, so hopefully the same remains true where you live.

@RogerRoger I probably should have started replaying the older games sooner so I could have gotten through SMT II and SMT If... as well, but I'll just return to those after SMT V. I'd like to review all of the MegaTen games at some point. Even the obscure, Japanese-only ones that has received fan translations.

But yeah, even if SMT V doesn't live up to the hype, there's still a pile of games I already know are great I could return to. It'd be a crying shame, though. Like Persona 5, this is Atlus' best opportunity to have the series go big. It's getting a ton of attention, Nintendo is pushing it hard, it's releasing on the hottest device on the market at the prime of its life, etc.

For the record, I only paid $50 for this. I wanted a physical copy, but, even if I didn't, I'll never support predatory "early release" pricing. Like with Nintendo, I absolutely love Atlus at their best, so it's disappointing to see them stooping to these sorts of tactics. Granted, Atlus games have had tons of DLC even going back to the 3DS era, but they also launched polished, complete products, and usually rewarded early adopters with free artbooks, soundtrack samplers, key chains, etc. SMT IV launched at a $10 premium on 3DS, but it also came with a sturdy collector's box and a well-illustrated 100+ page book that covered the first major chunk of the game.

The funny thing is that Sega owns Atlus now, so technically both this and Sonic Colors can be called "lazy Sega-published remasters."

But yeah, even if the port isn't ideal, it's still Nocturne on a modern portable console, y'know? I was never not going to enjoy it, although I did want to be honest about the flaws in the game and especially in the game's remastered version.

I'm not sure I was fully satisfied with this piece when I posted it (several sections were rewritten several times, tbh), so I'm glad to know it reads well.

As always, thanks for reading!

@RogerRoger I pre-ordered the $120 + tax Fall of Man Edition, which I almost never do, but... y'know. It wasn't easy, lemme tell ya: many hours of refreshing random storefronts and keeping an eagle eye on communities where people were posting info about them. Atlus was planning to drop the links to the edition at a specific time, but there many stores took days to put the links up and it caused anger and disruption among the people going for one. I actually ordered two of them in case one of them was delayed or something. I figured I could probably flip whichever one came later, but a friend of mine actually wants one as well, so I'll just sell it to him instead.

Well, it's weird. Atlus has been putting out decent Switch remasters of their games. Like Catherine: Full Body. Great version of the game, and it came with all previously released DLC included on the cart by default. Yet a much higher profile remaster like this, one that's supposed to build up hype for probably their most expensive project ever, is given a sloppy release like this? I don't get it.

With that said, I've not once been disappointed by the quality of a new game of theirs, and even if this release wasn't ideal, it didn't freeze on me, didn't crash, and there were no nightmarish glitches like in the Switch version of Sonic Colors, so it's still sadly better quality-wise than a ton of big releases out there!

@RogerRoger Having recently tried the game, it’s a pleasant surprise to see and read your review of Rez Infinite. And I appreciate the anecdote of how it helps you to relate to your Nan.

Honestly, I put the game on a couple months ago when it was offered on PS+ on a whim. Hearing that it was short I figured it would fit in nicely on a Saturday afternoon before devoting my time to other endeavors that evening. Unfortunately, I found it strangely difficult to play and not enjoyable. It felt more dated than I was expecting, and the input, albeit simple, didn’t feel intuitive at all to me. I probably gave the game 15-20 minutes of a trial, and quickly ended my gaming session, whether because I wasn’t enjoying it or because something else pulled me away I can’t remember — but the end result was I didn’t make it very far and really haven’t had a desire to go back.

I don’t mean to be too much of a wet blanket on your chiefly positive review, and in fact am glad to see the title get some attention. Reading your experience has me now contemplating if I could gel with it if I gave it another shot where it wasn’t an afterthought squeezed into a open half hour on a busy weekend. …Or maybe I really am as musically incompetent as my school instructors used to say 😅

@RogerRoger Wow! Great review!

First off, can I just mention I really like these title banners you've been using? I don't know where you're finding them or how you're making them (photoshop?), but they look extremely nice.

Second off, really effective way of drawing on your personal experience via your anecdote about your nan's chromesthesia. The human brain really is a fascinating thing. That very personal touch really added to the piece, and I thank you for sharing it.

I've wanted to play this game for a long time. I didn't actually know it was on the PS4, if I'm being honest! Nevertheless, given my time with another one of Mizuguchi's sense-tingling games (Tetris Effect), I definitely get what you mean about the almost hypnotic way it probably combines music, sound, movement, and color

Not surprised it's short if it's a rail shooter, which tend to be games designed to be replayed for score-chasing purposes, or maybe, in the case of a game like this, to enjoy an afternoon once in a while with something utterly entrancing.

As always, very, very well-written. Your command of the written word is fearsome.

Considering how focused you usually are on harvesting gorgeous screenshots, I'll take the fact that you were so engrossed in this that you only got (perfectly serviceable) normal ones to be a sort of recommendation of the game in its own right.

@RogerRoger Great write-up mate! The way you describe the game makes me very eager to check it out for myself. I believe it was given away for free during the PlayStation Stay At Home campaign, so I think I have it in my PS4 library to play. Surprised to hear that the game is so short though, but hey I don't mind short games every now and then! Not to mention that it looks like a very unique game and you know how much I love unique games. Will definitely have to give it a go soon.

@RogerRoger Great write-up mate and I'm glad to see you back, haven't seen you on the forums in a while now!

I feel like Ghost of Tsushima is the perfect example of PlayStation exclusives feeling too similar. Not only did it come out on the tail-end of PS4's life cycle when most people have already experienced the likes of Spider-Man, God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn and are most likely tired of the formula, but it just seems to play things way too safe. I remember watching new gameplay of the game before it launched last year and everyone was comparing the combat to other franchises such as Assassin's Creed.

I made a thread last week about games being more of the same and I feel like Ghost of Tsushima is a good example of that. It's probably a solid title for those that haven't played many of these games before, but it doesn't do anything new and different compared to previous games for us who have played tons of these games already. Games in general are simply becoming more of the same and I hear that from a lot of people as well because so many on this site are constantly saying that they are bored of playing certain games, which I'm guilty of as well! There's nothing wrong with that, it's just how the state of the industry is like right now.

I don't know if you read my first post in that thread, but yeah I just feel like most games these days are just more of the same compared to the 90s when we were constantly getting brand new experiences. Video games have obviously never been as good as they are today, but is that actually a good thing? There's no progression in the industry anymore, we're constantly seeing similar experiences.

Getting back to your review, it is kinda weird that Sucker Punch made a game where there aren't different choices that affect the story. I mean, their last franchise, inFAMOUS, was all about having good or bad karma based on choices you've made. So to not see something like that in Ghost of Tsushima is quite disappointing and I definitely agree with you there.

I haven't played Ghost of Tsushima yet but I'm definitely afraid that I'll end up with the same opinion of it as you, which is why I've been holding off on getting it. And even if I buy it, it might take years before I stomach up the courage to start it up as I really want to like it but I absolutely have to be in the right mood for it.

@RogerRoger Wonderful review and I can’t disagree with some of your criticisms (and points of praise). Specifically the issue of copy and paste gameplay is one that can’t be ignored. For me, the nuance of how the world is navigated, and the really stellar artistry of the world made the ‘samey’ gameplay formula more palatable. Perhaps it’s telling that I haven’t run out and grabbed the Iki Island DLC yet. Nor have I yet wanted to tackle another huge open world map icon-chaser from my backlog yet (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Days Gone, Miles Morales, Immortals, and heck even Frozen Wilds all sit there perched at the ready but I can’t bring myself to dive into). Open world fatigue is definitely a thing.

I think that when I played GoT I did so over an extended period of time, I think the game took me on the order of 3 months to finish, and I had a few short breaks in the middle where i played little diversions like Erica, NBA2K and DOOM intermixed between chasing the Ghost platinum. With a little self-imposed pacing, I found the experience to be fantastic.

Speaking of which, did the redundancy of the open world experience thwart a platinum attempt or do you reckon you got it in you?

@RogerRoger Nice thoughts and much I agree with. The duels always felt really cool and were normally impressive set pieces with their location too.

But the main combat did get samey. It was nice that failing a sneaky approach didn’t feel like it punished you but it was rare that multiple enemies attacking you felt like a threat.

I also felt that it let you unlock all the cool stuff really early on, other than Ghost mode, so there didn’t feel much combat progression after the first “chapter”.

@RogerRoger I really liked the special armour set on Iki that removed blocking but increased the parry window. The special duels with the wooden swords were a cool addition too.

I have to admit I used the combat items very infrequently as I often forgot about them or felt it was too much fiddling around to swap items around in the middle of combat. Ghost mode was fun to use when there were lots of enemies but rarely a game changer.

EDIT: I also really like your Iki monkey pic from the review!

@RogerRoger Top notch puns in the picture captions

@RogerRoger Welcome back! And with another great review.

Your point about all of the game's objectives boiling down to 'go here, stab these guys' is fair, and I could see how playing multiple objective-laden open world map games in a row would exhaust you a bit. The trade-off between freedom and content diversity in open world vs linear games has long been an issue, of course, since there's arguably a degree of uniformity required in the content of games that allow you to run around and do whatever you want on the map. And for people who aren't fans of cinematic video games, the same sort of weariness can set in when the player has to spend long stretches of time tilting the analog stick up as the player is slowly railroaded through a series of set-pieces and environments that amount to little more than pretty scenery. This is why, more often than, mixing elements of these two design extremes produces better games overall.

Usually the best remedy for weariness with games designed in similar ways is to play stuff that's entirely different, so, yeah, maybe it's for the best if you delay your trip to the Forbidden West. It's not like the game won't drop in price. Sony was literally giving HZD away last year, and it was only a year or two after release before they had it down to bargain bin prices.

Your screenshots are stunning, and, given the beauty of the game in general, I imagine you must have spent a good chunk of those 60 hours fiddling around with photo mode.

I do think you're right about the experience being respectful to the culture. It was well-received in Japan, and the game, as I recall, stimulated interest in helping to preserve historical landmarks on the island. It's a cool way to draw attention to a thoroughly underexplored setting with a rich history.

Which language did you choose to experience the game in, btw? I recall one of the touted bonuses of this version of the game on PS5 was lip-syncing that matched the Japanese audio track.

Interesting point about games becoming so high-quality that we fixate more on their flaws, although this is probably to be expected from developers who are so accomplished that excellence becomes the norm. You often see the same dynamic at play in interpersonal relationships and in parenting.

I think it's easier to be critical because of the sheer number of high-quality games that are out there as well. We're drowning in very good-to-excellent games these days, so simply being very good-to-excellent is no longer enough for a game to stand out anymore.

Well, anyway, like I said, excellent review. Hopefully a sequel manages to make the dialogue choices more meaningful, and Sucker Punch finds a way to diversify its gameplay going forward so it feels a bit less like Assassin's Creed: Japan or whatever.

@RogerRoger I messed around with Legends mode once or twice. And although I found it to be a very high quality multiplayer addition, especially considering it was a free add-on, I couldn’t stick with it for any length of time. I’m not ruling out going back to it one day, but I just have too much on the single-player front to tackle.

@RogerRoger great review Rog… I thoroughly enjoyed GoT (‘uncut by the director’ version 😉) but I certainly see and understand your points. I am a sucker for open-world action-adventures though in fairness. Really well written too, it was a pleasure.

@RogerRoger Good to know and I’d echo the offer too, should you ever want to make a run at 100%-ing the trophy list and need a collaborator, or if you just feel the drive to jump back into feudal Japan from a multiplayer standpoint just for kicks.