Ralizah

This and SMT V stomp the majority of Pokemon games I've played to date. Just tremendous games all-around.

Had no idea DMC was so popular.

Eh.

lol Reminds me of that one female vtuber who was outed as a guy years ago when something malfunctioned during a stream.

In fairness, people misrepresenting themselves on the internet is as old as the internet itself. Anonymity allows people to safely play with the boundaries of expression and identity.

Maybe there's some gender dysphoria behind this. Or maybe they're gay and enjoyed the attention from clueless young men. Or maybe they just enjoyed playing a character utterly unlike themselves online.

Either way, best to just assume any anonymous individual on the English-speaking internet is a white male in their 30s, since you'll probably be right more than half the time.

Sony really threw the PSVR2 bros out to the wolves lol. I get not making this an exclusive, but not even having a mode for PSVR2 owners? Brutal.

That said, I learned my lesson with the PS Vita: Sony won't support anything other than its home console line in any long term sense.

@NoHope The remakes on PS4 are even better IMO. The originals are still excellent, but as with many old platformers, the dated controls can take a bit to get adjusted to.

I call mine my library. Calling it a backlog makes it feel like work to get through or something!

@Decimateh-xblz Oh yeah, there's zero social sim here. All exploring post-apocalyptic landscapes, gaining demonic allies, and defeating challenging bosses while vibing to a very atmospheric and rock and synth-heavy soundtrack.

@Judal27 Well, see, I think the game would have done better with more ambiguous writing, like Nocturne, which is very Souls-like in terms of how it embraces ambiguity and mystery. The problem with SMT V is that its writing was very... plain, but extremely underdeveloped. Also, it did very little with its cast outside of some sidequests, and Dazai's character arc was objectively terrible.

I'm good with either a more involved plot and cast (which seems to be the route they've gone with), or more skillfully minimalistic storytelling ala Souls.

Thankfully, they seem to have taken a lot of criticisms of the original to heart.

I'm critical on SMT V because it could have been so much more than it was, but I do adore the game as well. One of the better OSTs in the series (for SMT, I prefer Kozuka to Meguro, and I'm glad Atlus kept him on after his superb soundtrack for SMT IV). An absolutely amazing bump to presentation, exploration, and level design (something I wish Persona would do; the series still feels like it's trapped in the PS3 era). The difficulty curve on Hard was challenging but fair. And I really, really liked how much it leaned into the Pokemon/monster collecting angle, even compared to previous entries.

It was a good SMT game. Hopefully it'll be one of the best when Vengeance drops.

@NoHope I always preferred the Spyro trilogy on PS1 to Nintendo's platformer offerings on N64.

I really need to play World while that game still has an active player base.

@Decimateh-xblz You'll be managing stat spreads for your MC in almost any mainline SMT game.

If you want a game with a 'town-overworld-dungeon' gameplay loop, I recommend grabbing SMT III: Nocturne HD when it's on sale. The gameplay style is more old school in that than Atlus' modern games.

SMT V doesn't really have towns. You're exploring vast, demon-infested wastelands for hours at a time.

@Judal27 8/10 for me on Switch. What kept it down was the performance issues, aggressive level scaling, and terrible plot. All of which this re-release seems to fix.

The high points of the game were marvelous, and it can finally sing on decent hardware.

That review does not read like a 7/10 lol

Grinding was a necessary evil in the original release due to the way damage scales based on your character's level, but the devs said they nerfed this in Vengeance, which should mean there's no longer a need for grinding. Atlus fixed the level grinding issue with the introduction of press-turn combat.

I actually really loved the story pacing in SMT V, which left you alone for long periods to explore new regions and find new demons. But then, I play SMT for the atmosphere, challenge, and music, not so that the game can stop every five minutes and make me listen to a bunch of yapping.

Have both this and SMT V: Vengeance preordered and paid already. I've been studiously avoiding new releases, but there's no way I wasn't grabbing a gigantic new Atlus JRPG like this on day one.

And, outside of Nintendo and Capcom, this is the reason I ignore AAA stuff almost entirely. Plenty of good mid-budget stuff still coming out of Japan, and some truly excellent indies from Western developers.

@Amnesiac I just didn't find the system or reward structure to be very intuitive or interesting in general compared to similar offerings from MS and Nintendo.

@nessisonett Weird. Maybe it's a regional issue? It still works fine for me, other than MS gutting the quests as part of their endless crusade to destroy the Xbox brand.

This looked SUPER janky. Not a huge issue when you're a slow burn survival horror game with a focus on atmosphere (Silent Hill), but much more so for action horror.

lmao

It was pretty ill-advised from the start. Microsoft Rewards it was not. Although Microsoft is also working on making that terrible as well.

The game is incredibly generic looking and will be released amidst a sea of more established games in this genre. It might surprise and pop off, but I could also see an initial surge of interest giving way to a disinterested player-base.

Either way, it's yet another Sony title that just isn't for me.

These publishers sure are doing a good job of destroying the few really good Western AAA game developers that are left in the industry.

Even with their myriad flaws, companies like SEGA, Capcom, Nintendo, Bandai-Namco, and Square-Enix are why I'm still invested in this hobby.

Incoming: The Last of Parts I & II, LEGO Edition. A certain scene in Part II would become inadvertently hilarious if their bodies still explode into bits when they die.

@BusyOlf It's a Sony property.

I guarantee you that if there's a Mario or Zelda Lego game, you won't be playing it on your PS5. Or your PC, for that matter, since Nintendo is the one remaining company that believes in actual exclusivity for their games.

They just released the Portal not long ago.

Additionally, it's a crowded market as is, and why buy this when the Steam Deck is able to play most PS5 games as well at an acceptable level of performance?

This is great. I'm so ready for something new out of Atlus. I miss the sheer variety of their output on handhelds and older consoles.

Nintendo Directs get leaked all the time as well. I can reliably know most of what's going to be shown in a broadcast if I choose to spoil myself.

I rarely see leaks of Microsoft shows mentioned. Maybe it's because of a general lack of interest?

Something lighter-hearted like the older Uncharted games would be nice. Good games don't have to be deconstructive misery porn.

@Dodoo The Splatoon dev also released Animal Crossing: New Horizons in 2020. Thankfully, they seem to be kept busy on meaty expansions and new games instead of wasting years remaking games that are already playable on modern hardware.

Just SMT V: Vengeance for me until Metaphor: ReFantazio drops. This year is superb for Sega/Atlus and dire for everyone else.

Imagine it was a fanservice game instead. You get different costumes, but they break when you're hit a few times, and you spend the game scavenging different clothes that also inevitably break after a few hits. You eventually find the Master Dress, but even that breaks and you have to wait for a timer to count down for it to re-form.

@Undeadcop Who is the hunk in your pfp?

Oddly enough, Infinity Nikki. It was adorable. How the actual game itself holds up remains to be seen, of course.

@themightyant I could see that. Generations are becoming less and less distinct as time goes on, and diminishing returns means the PS6 won't be all that different feeling from the PS5. The generational upgrade model was destined to become less and less viable over time. I think Nintendo got ahead of that with the Wii and Switch, which were both sideways moves that also bought them time in the arms race that Sony and Microsoft no longer have (although the latter seems to pivoting away from a reliance on dedicated hardware anyway, with xcloud being their long-term gambit in this industry).

That one comment saying it feels like a parody game is mostly on point, although I'd say it's less like a parody, and more like what I'd expect an AI to cobble together if you fed it information on the biggest games and movies from the last decade.

Guardians of the Overwatch indeed.

@nessisonett lol

I've been rewatching Buffy with my boyfriend, and it's occurred to me how the same style of dialogue I still find charming in that show annoys the heck out of me in everything I see it in today. Probably because that level of snark makes more sense for a group of media-literate teens in the 90s than it does from superheroes and aliens. Whedon shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near Disney's MCU (or, in retrospect now that we know what the man is like, most of the cast of Buffy, for that matter).

@themightyant I like to think that by the time the PS7 rolls around, development times will be so long that software targeting the PS7 won't come out until the PS8 drops, and the entire generation is technically just PS6 software.

In reality, dev times will likely be shorter because these companies will have fired significant portions of their development staff and shift the majority of the work over to more efficient artificial intelligences.

@themightyant Likely. Game development takes a long time for titles this detailed, so we're really starting to see the proper start of current-generation support now that the cross-generation stuff has almost all released. I'd expect this to remain the case over the remaining course of the PS5's lifespan.

Not generally a fan of Bloober's games, but I feel like they understand the legacy of this game and are taking care to treat this remake with the care and respect it deserves.

I'd love it if this convinced them to pivot toward making their own survival horror games. Bloober Team's games are on point in terms of atmosphere, but they're missing the mix of action, exploration, and puzzle-solving that defined classic Japanese horror game design.

The brand has been running on fumes for years and the PS5 is still selling faster than the PS4 in their biggest market. Microsoft is also doing everything possible to push people away from investing in their console hardware. Most of the PS fanbase is mindlessly loyal and has already invested in their ecosystem for this generation. And the hardware will enjoy a titanic bump in sales for years once GTA VI releases.

So, respectfully, Sony has no incentive to woo people to its ecosystem. These broadcasts are just a formality. They could go radio silent for years and it wouldn't really matter to their bottom line at all.

I think we'll see Resident Evil 9, some live-service game from Sony nobody cares about, and, yeah, Astro Bot. The Lego Horizon game wouldn't surprise me, either.

I mean, Genshin initially borrowed quite a bit from BotW and eventually forged its own unique identity. I'm sure this can do the same.

I sorta feel like I missed the boat with Genshin, so I might give this a go and see how I feel about it. Still very leery of the monetization model, but Genshin felt fairly premium when I played it without dropping a dime, so if this can replicate that feeling, I'm all for it.

@SirSephy Uncharted 5. Can't wait for a muscle-bound Nadine to return and beat Nathan to death in front of his daughter once it's discovered he killed someone Nadine knew in one of his many murder sprees adventures. Nathan's daughter vows revenge and spends half the game killing dogs.

10/10. Everyone claps.

They'll have a show sometime this year. Use big reveals like RE9 to distract people from the absence of first-party software for PS5.

Must be a sale on Ring Fit Adventure or something.

@Recover20 Admittedly, the only reason I'm still on TitS is because the first one was so boring I spent years steadfastly avoiding the sequel. I'm enjoying SC more, though. It's incredibly silly, but stuff is actually happening now.

Third one is apparently more of a dungeon-crawler, so we'll see how that goes.

I buy precious little at full price, especially $70 games, but if this reviews well, I might have to buy in at launch. Footage has looked stellar so far.

Even with the fairly rudimentary graphics, I have no idea how Falcom is pumping these gigantic RPGs out so quickly.

Still need to beat Trails in the Sky SC. I'm never catching up lol.

A visual stunner that is a pretty average experience under the hood, by all accounts. The Microsoft equivalent of something like The Order: 1886. Even Pure Xbox isn't giving it a particularly high score.

Although, tbh, realistic graphics like this aren't as visually pleasing for me as something more stylized.

@MrBook Yup. Both inspire a sense of curiosity and wonder, which is what you want in an exploration-based game. You're not wandering around a needlessly huge map just following checkpoint markers, which is how most open world games (especially GoT) are. The worlds feel alive and cohesive.

Not coincidentally, BotW, TotK, and ER are three of the most successful adventure games of all time critically and commercially. Zelda went from selling 5 - 10 million units lifetime across multiple platforms to TotK selling 20 million units in three months, and BotW clearing more than 30 million copies lifetime. Elden Ring is also From Software's most successful game and is well on its way to matching or exceeding that figure. It's almost like the market is sending a signal to developers: "Hey, we want more games like this!"

Gorgeous game, but the actual open world exploration is very rote.

I think Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and Elden Ring have spoiled me.

Can't believe I'm saying this, but GoT would've been better as a more linear experience with better pacing. It doesn't really do anything to justify the open area design.

Sony has worked hard to make sure PS4 and PC owners feel included in the ecosystem.

The thing is, if I'm already included, why do I need new hardware?

The PS5 feels very skippable, so I'm skipping it.

I also think the PS4 was successful enough and has a big enough library that a lot of people who don't necessarily need the hot new thing every year will be content with it through the majority of this console generation.

@johncalmc Nun Yakuza kinda sounds like another mode or side-activity within Yakuza tbh

So much negativity, but I think it sounds adorable! I'll be curious to see how well the gameplay translates, but I'm optimistic!

It's Ubisoft. This $130 version will probably be $30 or less in a year or so.