Ralizah

I've had access to these games for years on PC. Just have no interest, really. Nothing Microsoft has published in the last few years has moved the needle for me.

Really sad to see what the Xbox console brand has been reduced to. I still have a bunch of 360 games. That was an awesome platform.

@Sondheimist It's actually apparently not the only outfit that was changed. From just a casual search, I'm seeing images online of discrepancies with at least one other outfit. The predictable alteration: less cleavage.

Moreover, considering the developer has a reputation for leaning on sex appeal for their games, I find the notion that they had an "artistic" impulse to suddenly cover up the breasts in a few of their outfits at the last moment (considering the version that was shipped on discs features unaltered costumes) to be... implausible. Especially, when, let's be fair, Sony has a very recent history of making developers censor their games.

Regardless of what the actual explanation is, considering how they chose to advertise the game, they should have communicated the changes online prior to launch.

@UltimateOtaku91 It's okay, we all do it. I grabbed Unicorn Overlord without trying the demo, despite it apparently having a VERY weird take on SRPG combat. So we'll see how that goes. Just saw it on sale and couldn't resist.

Hey, at least you still have FFVII Rebirth. Or are you done with that already?

The developer EXPLICITLY advertised it as being free of the normal censorship that plague these sort of releases on Playstation consoles on their official Twitter account. So I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to be upset with this, given those circumstances. The dev not communicating these changes makes me think they were trying to lie by omission to avoid a rash of pre-order cancellations and were just hoping people wouldn't notice for a while.

As if the sort of people who lose sleep over video game booba being covered up weren't pouring over these outfits with hawk eyes anyway lol

@UltimateOtaku91 Playing the demo would have been a much cheaper way of discovering you dislike the style of combat in this game. Just saying.

Sounds like the sort of game where the negative aspects will be patched in coming months, so I think I'll just dump it into a wishlist for later consideration.

@Gamer83 You underestimate the ability for anything and everything, regardless of intention, to be subsumed by the culture war.

I'd give it a few weeks max before somebody found a way to connect this incident to Sweet Baby Inc, lol

Thank god. Now I don't need to have this thrown in my face online as an example of "SJWs" destroying video games for the next ten years.

And it wouldn't be cool to deliberately remove that sort of thing in a post-release patch anyway.

Incredibly random announcement, but I'm down for more WayForward action platformers.

Brilliant. I hope they patch this into previous PC releases as well.

@Kevw2006 Returnal is a bit rough, and Horizon Forbidden West drops to low framerates in spots, but everything else runs pretty well. Even former exclusives like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and The Last of Us remake.

And even then, HFW will probably be patched and optimized a bit over time.

@The_Wailing_Doom Of the big three, Microsoft's player base is far and away the most digital-centric in terms of their purchasing habits. They'll unquestionably be the first to cut off physical media entirely from their console line.

I HIGHLY doubt that. NieR: Automata is one of the very best games from last gen. Accessible but thrilling combat. Gorgeous music. Interesting themes. A fascinating story. And one of the most mind-boggling true endings I've ever seen in a game.

Only three episodes in so far, but it's a strong contender for best video game adaptation to date outside of anime. They did an amazing job capturing the look of the games.

@NEStalgia People hear "Final Fantasy" and they think classic JRPG. Even after XVI, XV, and whatever the hell XIII was trying to be. You can't escape that association, no matter how much they tried to scrub the Japanese-ness off the brand with the last mainstream entry.

Anyway, to be clear, if a pivot away from exclusivity didn't have the potential to be harmful to the brand, Starfield would have been on PS5 day one, and Microsoft wouldn't just now be sending over some smaller exclusives.

You have to weigh profit margins against the possibility of long-term damage to the brand. Although, in Microsoft's case, the push toward multiplatform publishing seems to be accelerating now. Especially since they've all but given up on gaining market share in the home console space.

Sony is heavily reliant on that sector, however, so it's in their interest to give people a heavy incentive to continue buying their hardware and remaining the de facto home console brand. Wringing a few extra million units sold from PC and Xbox ports won't solve the fundamental budgetary issues they have.

@HonestHick

"One more thing i think that is hurting Sony is they took one of their best teams in Insomniac and turned them into a Marvel games studio."

No objections on that front, dude. Like them closing Japan Studio and pivoting away from publishing a greater variety of AA experiences, it's a result of the blockbuster-itis they contracted when they began westernizing the brand.

It's really sad how I've had to write off both Insomniac (not a Marvel fan) and Naughty Dog this gen, in addition to them closing some of their smaller studios as well. Ugh.

@HonestHick Games have thrived as exclusives on one platform for generations without issue. Exclusivity used to be the norm, actually. It was only in the seventh gen that the 'everything goes everywhere' ethos started.

Exclusives were a unique area of competition between platforms. They're usually not the biggest sellers every gen (unless you're Nintendo lol), but they help to diversify different platforms and often make a strong argument for opting for one manufacturer's console over another.

Sony's problem is that they insist on making everything a $200+ million dollar photo-realistic blockbuster now because they successfully groomed their base into only wanting those, which is cutting into their profit margins for even objectively ultra-successful releases like Spider-Man 2.

Anyway, there's a reason JRPGs rarely get gigantic budgets relative to more conventionally mainstream genre. Two million at launch is still huge for any JRPG not called Pokemon. It's a niche genre, so there's not as much space in the market to expand as there is with something like a third-person cinematic action-adventure title.

@NEStalgia Hard to say. It's not like these games are selling historically badly or anything, and Sony seems to like keeping Final Fantasy exclusive to their consoles.

Sony paying to hobble the competition has been a time-tested winning strategy for them since the PS1. Even if it's not strictly necessary, they're also not letting their guard down around Microsoft. There's a reason they didn't jack up the price of the PS5 in the U.S. like they did everywhere else, after all.

Pity. This looks terrific. If it was a real exclusive I'd have bought the console just to play it.

@HonestHick Timed exclusivity deal, and shorter for this than it was for Remake. Rebirth will probably be on PC within a year. The only question for me is if Epic is going to delay the Steam version with its own moneyhatting.

Also, the sad truth is that it's probably more lucrative on S-E's end to accept Sony's money than it would be to port the game to Xbox. JRPGs didn't do well on Xbox BEFORE Microsoft trained its base to pay their monthly dues and wait for the 'free' versions of games they want.

SMT V can finally shine on competent hardware!

Glad they opted to drastically alter the narrative elements in the new campaign, since the story was a major weakness of the original.

Amazing year to be a MegaTen fan!

There's a lot of games out there, limited time in my life, and, frankly, I don't want to spend hundreds of hours on any one title. I like the variety afforded by exclusively playing single-player story-based games.

Endlessly addicting game. Good lord, I was hooked for weeks on the PC Game Pass release!

@BaldBelper78 New Switch owners. A gigantic chunk of purchasers grab it alongside their new console.

I'll sacrifice a considerable amount of graphical fidelity to achieve smoother performance in my games, so it's important to me on stationary platforms.

That said, I've never passed up a game for performance reasons, and I don't plan to start now.

@NEStalgia I actually totally agree. Soul Hackers 2 seems like a perfect hybrid game. Designed, even, by the Tokyo Mirage Sessions people. Environments are small, dungeons are labyrinths, etc. Yet the dummies seem intent on making it impossible to play that way. It doesn't even run well on Steam Deck for some godforsaken reason.

Meanwhile, yeah, let's make this way more ambitious SMT game that has enormous environments, to-scale demons lumbering everywhere, and tons of advanced visual effects exclusive to Nintendo's latest toaster.

Just ordered a copy this morning.

For my Switch OLED, of course, just like I snagged Muramasa, Dragon's Crown, and Odin Sphere on Vita. Vanillaware games shine brightest on OLED handhelds.

Honestly, Dragon Quest XI (especially S) was a lovely celebration of the series. If it ended there, I wouldn't be too sad.

@NEStalgia Megami Tensei is pretty much the OG monster collecting franchise, yeah, even going back to the original games on the Famicom.

The lack of that element in Soul Hackers 2 is a big reason I didn't stick with that game, I think.

I've already played SMT V all the way through on Normal and halfway through on Hard. Going for another full playthrough of the new route when this comes out. It was flawed, but I LOVED SMT V.

I'm just patiently waiting for the remake of the third game.

The new content all looks awesome. I feel like I'm getting a new SMT game.

Guess I'm buying it a third time!

@UltimateOtaku91 No, they're different story routes. Nothing has indicated understanding one is conditional on playing the other.

@AccessibleDaydream Persona and SMT share similar spell names, monsters (although they're called demons in SMT), fusion mechanics, etc. Persona games tend to split the focus between social simulation gameplay and more streamlined JRPG gameplay, whereas SMT games ARE combat and exploration-focused the entire time.

Persona games feature a larger emphasis on humor and character development in magical realist contemporary settings, whereas SMT games tend to be either apocalyptic fantasy (III and V in particular) or have more of a science-fiction/dark future setting (I, II, the IV duology, and Strange Journey), which is also generally apocalyptic. SMT games also tend to focus more on questions of morality, through the filter of a tabletop RPG-like Order/Chaos dichotomy, with characters taking sides in ideological conflicts where their factions are typically supported by different Gods.

As a result of this, unlike Persona, SMT games have stories that change depending on the choices that characters make, typically leading to some wildly different in-game scenarios and endings depending on which faction they support.

SMT games also tend to have a very Abrahamic religious bent to them. You're typically mixed up in a supernatural war of some sort between Heaven and Hell.

Persona games feature more... casual friendly gameplay, whereas SMT is more hardcore and combat-focused.

SMT also have a laser focus on more explicitly supernatural themes. The demons in SMT are explicitly drawn from world mythology. Any similarities in Persona are because they're reflections of the collective unconscious in that series. That said, you'll have a stricter focus on actual mythological entities in SMT.

SMT, especially SMT V, is also much more of a monster-collector. In Persona, your monsters tend to act as equipment for your cast of characters, but in SMT, you're actually fighting alongside your demons. A comparison to Pokemon comes up a lot. As a result, you tend to have a lot more freedom in terms of party experimentation and builds, like in a Pokemon game.

So basically: one series is more casual-friendly and has the social simulation/wish fulfillment/dating sim Japanese teenager elements (Persona), and one series is more hardcore, speculative, and focused on challenging combat and exploration (SMT).

And also, they have different development teams within Atlus. So different people are making these games.

@sanguinekhajiit Presumably their market analysis expands beyond the confines of Push Square article comment sections, and they think they can make a profit on the port.

That, indeed, shouldn't be too complicated to figure out.

It has been shown off by both Nintendo and Microsoft so far. Might as well complete the triad.

Companies will chase this type of game because of how lucrative a lot of these older titles are, but it's a bit of a trap, because this gold rush is unsustainable. Existing games already command the attention and wallets of an ingrained majority of Playstation owners, so with every successful live service game, there's less and less room for newer titles to make it big. Doesn't mean they can't (Helldivers 2 is making that VERY clear), but more and more resources are being poured into a type of game that has less and less to offer newcomers to the market.

Meanwhile, single player games may be less lucrative per title, but there's an ever cycling appetite for new ones. Companies just need to learn to control their budgets a bit.

@Specky Ah. It has been pretty sad watching the Americanization and homogenization of the Playstation brand over the last several years.

The mainstream of Western gaming has become toxic, which is why I stay shut up in my indie/Japanese AA/Nintendo bubble. Those have some issues too, but not nearly to the same degree, and I'm rarely disappointed by new releases I'm looking forward to.

@Flaming_Kaiser Pretty much my point.

The game exists. If you can port it to a modern system and make more money from it, why wouldn't you?

@Specky Then branch out? Play more Nintendo games. Play more indies. Play more Japanese AA titles. Whatever looks fun.

You don't need to be "hyped" to find countless fun games to occupy your time if you look outside of the usual heavily-marketed AAA fare.

Even if you just stuck with Playstation, there are so many games on the platform that I guarantee you haven't played that there's not really any reason to be bored or pessimistic.

It is sometimes frustrating to see these genius-level video game fans who create these amazing looking games have years of work erased when they're inevitably hit with C&D letters.

Glad she was able to rebrand and re-release this. Sony should help fund a port to the PS5.

I'll stick with the Etrian Odyssey series. Pretty much every other first-person dungeon crawler I've played has been a disappointment in comparison.

@sanguinekhajiit "fun little dungeon crawler, but ... why?"

...the same reason almost any older game is ported to modern consoles?

Makes sense. Sales data seems to suggest it sold better on Switch, and unlike 13 Sentinels, it was there at launch.

@Specky

"Very telling that CDPR has made better games than all of the above. Even 2077 is better on launch than anything Ubisoft has released in the past decade"

Um, no. 2077 was a broken mess of a game at launch. At least on console.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft published high-quality games like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, both Mario + Rabbids games, South Park: The Stick of Truth (not developed by Ubi, but published by them), Trials Rising, Child of Light, etc. I don't recall any of those launching with game-breaking bugs or terrible optimization on their target platforms.

Ubisoft isn't JUST AssCreed and Far Cry.

The PS5 has sustained itself off the incredible momentum achieved during the PS4 generation, but it's far from being a great console like that was, and looks unlikely to outsell it (let alone the PS2 lol).

As a software publisher, Sony has arguably never been as weak as it is right now, stuck in a rut of occasionally releasing safe, prohibitively expensive sequels to existing properties and little else of consequence in-between.

Moreover, Sony is continuing to expand the availability of its software outside of the Playstation ecosystem, making the PS5 a console that's arguably only necessary for the biggest Playstation fans. It wouldn't surprise me if they eventually get to the point where the window between console and PC releases for big blockbuster tentpoles is non-existent.

@ShogunRok Yeah. I think, other things being equal, it's a worthwhile feature, but I certainly wouldn't tank performance to achieve somewhat more realistic shading.

It makes a bigger difference in certain games. Cyberpunk 2077's neon-lit dystopia looks almost transformed at night with RT enabled, based on what I've seen. But here? Eh.

Probably makes more sense to build next-gen GPUs around the feature.

Other than the shadowed areas being a bit darker, I'm struggling to see a major difference between the RT and non-RT screenshots. Perhaps it's more noticeable in 4K on a bigger screen.

I don't mind when EGS funds the development of games that might otherwise have never existed (AW2, presumably), but the stupid little deals they've offered companies to try and introduce console-style timed exclusivity to the PC space in an attempt to drive business away from Steam has been a nuisance. Hoping we see less and less of that now.

Ehhh.

I hate it when games force a reliance on parrying. I was hoping for the fast but less technical combat of something like NieR: Automata.

Definitely less excited now.

Might as well wait for the launch year re-release on the PS6 by that point! And then wait until the 2040s for GTA 7.

As long as the game isn't balanced around the purchase of microtransactions, it doesn't bother me. I put up with it in Atlus games, and I'll put up with it here.

All I can think about is that Senran Kagura game trailer where half of it was the developers fondling and shaking jello molds.

@NEStalgia They'd probably have to spend a year on the physics calculations involved with a food fight scene.

@Lup Tell me about it. I started it recently, and it really is just all window dressing. GORGEOUS window dressing, but still. I don't know why this needed to be an open world, since it does nothing interesting with it and clearly yearns to be a cinematic action game.

@NEStalgia I don't necessarily hate that style of open world game either, as long as it's done well. Horizon is that type of game, and I loved it. It actually is a closer equivalent to what BotW would look like if it was more in the style of an Ubisoft game. Just give it stylized anime visuals and the soft Ghibli filter. And slash the budget in half.

I spent a couple of weeks OBSESSED with TotK. Like, I cleared 80+ hours in that time. And then I just... dropped it. Haven't been back since. I will go back, since I'd like to fully beat it, but yeah, it's weird. I didn't stop playing BotW until I had beaten it and was satisfied with my progress.

Probably doesn't help I spent half my time in the Depths mining zonite. Although I exploited a duplication glitch that saved me hours of tedium, so that was cool, I guess.

@NEStalgia It's just not, though. It completely de-emphasizes the checklisting, quest design, and mindless gameplay loop that define Ubisoft open world games. There was nothing like it at the time, and it STILL feels fresh today, even if other developers are starting to take notes for their own games.

I will admit to hoping that the next one is more Elden Ring and less Minecraft, though. TotK is a super innovative game, but we're at the point where, yeah, it's starting to feel like a new IP.

@NEStalgia I felt a similar, although less pronounced, awe when I first played Gravity Rush on my Vita. People didn't buy the Vita, though, so it never had the chance to really prove itself to the public.

I totally disagree on BotW. Aside from the towers to expand your map, it's nothing like Ubisoft open world games at all. Which is why it was such an industry-shaking release: it created a new type of open world game that defied the established conventions people were used to.

That Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild are considered two of the greatest games ever made, I think, speaks to the potential of this style of open world game design.

@NEStalgia Gravity Rush is better off dead without the original development studio to make it. I don't want to see them 'Weekend at Bernie's' it and end up destroying its legacy like when Konami handed off the Silent Hill IP to random Western developers.

Ironic that the same dude created both series!

@NEStalgia I'll admit to being amused by all of the "It's so cool being able to play games away from the TV!" rhetoric when handhelds have existed for ages. Like... I agree it's cool being able to play a home console-tier title on a portable system, but let's not act like the concept of a portable console itself is something new.

Hell, the Nomad was effectively a Switch back in the 90s, and nobody cared. It's definitely less "Nintendo did a new thing nobody ever thought of before" and more "Nintendo found a way to take this style of console design and make it appealing and mainstream."

I do agree Breath of the Wild as a launch title was an important part of its success as well. It was very much the proof-of-concept people needed to sell the idea of a Switch. I'm so used to playing big boy TV games on a portable system now, but back in 2017, playing the new, hugely ambitious Zelda game on a portable system, booting it up on the tablet, was a WOW moment that'll stick with me forever.