turntSNACO

@ztpayne7 Yeah, this is my only concern. I love how the game resolved and worry that adding some big final mission might change the tone of the ending for the worse. But the final mission of P4G was great, so I guess I'll join you in trusting them to get it right!

Holy crap, grappling hooks! That explains Joker's move in Smash. We all assumed it was just a reference to the menu transitions, but Sakurai knew...

@AlejandroMora Good localizations take time. To avoid delay, Atlus would have to either sit on the Japanese release for months after it's ready for release or crank out a quick localization that short-changes the writing and/or voice-acting of the original. Neither is great - I'd personally rather wait and have them get it right.

This honestly looks like the most paint-by-numbers game imaginable. Zombies, gruff dad, fridged wife, open-world survival. Boxes checked. We've seen all this so many times before. Maybe this'll be the best version of some of those elements, but I wish they'd taken some kind of creative risk. As is, the main selling point of this game seems to be "Hey, you like this kind of game right? Wanna buy another? I guess the hordes are pretty big..."

@Torakaka Bayonetta Makoto is a good call. I'd like Ann as Peach, Haru as Daisy, Ren & Ryuji as Mario & Luigi.

But all that really matters is getting a Waluigi costume for Yusuke.

I'm interested to see how it all shakes out. P5 on Switch would be the ideal way to replay imo, but looks like Royal is going to have me chained to the TV for another 80 hours. Either way, I'm glad to have a reason to dive back in!

@1nn3rSPACE Yeah, that's fair. I think it's less an issue to me because AAA turn-based JRPGs are becoming a rarer breed, or at least a less culturally impactful one in the west. Also, I prefer the steady JRPG progression of Persona. You're always getting access to new personas with stronger abilities. Plus a lot of confidants unlock game-changing abilities that let you save time and feel more powerful in battle.

In Witcher, it's pretty easy to get to a point where you gain effectively 0 experience from side quests and realize you're probably not going to find better equipment until you level up enough to get the next Griffin set or whatever. I always get to the same point in Skyrim, where my character has their ideal weapons and armor and it suddenly feels pointless to keep playing since I'm not going to get appreciably stronger.

I think the importance of this factor to an individual player is one of the biggest factors in deciding which game you'll enjoy more. That and your ability to get invested a visual novel about kids in high school.

@NintendoFan4Lyf That was my experience on Genichiro. Tried him 10+ times, took a break for a few days and suddenly felt like I figured him out. It felt like the successful run took about half the time of the average loss a few days prior. Still mad about his jump-shot arrows, though...

@NintendoFan4Lyf The jumping attack should be blockable, but I don't know if I ever tried. For me, it worked out best to side-step the jump, mikiri the follow-up thrust in phase 1 or back out of range of the follow-up sweep in phase 2 and prepare a charged thrust. It's super-reliable if you get a handle on the range, which isn't too much considering the wind-up speed. I've found that getting his health bar down to about 70% really helps with his posture regen, so I'd prioritize health over posture damage when you've got the choice (though not by trying to side step-counter his basic combos, since the timing is much harder than deflecting).

Good luck!

@3MonthBeef Ideal difficulty varies from person to person. Super easy can be boring, super difficult can be frustrating and un-fun. I'd say the appeal is to people whose threshold is high. Can't blame you for finding it unpleasant - for me the moments of success outweigh the frustration of failure.

@NintendoFan4Lyf Absolutely this. Anytime you're not up close on a boss swinging and deflecting, you're doing it wrong. Took me a long time to appreciate this, but Genichiro 2nd encounter really drove the point home.

@ApostateMage Maybe I didn't get far enough in to appreciate Yen (I dropped off shortly after she effed up that garden).

As for Ann - do you know who else saw her as "nothing but a cheerleader"? Kamoshida. You sound exactly like Kamoshida right now. Wow. Here's hoping this is the wakeup call you need to turn your life around before you too become a pervy volleyball coach.

jkjk, thanks for fighting me as requested

Interesting seeing the split in opinion between Witcher and Persona. Your preference really depends on what you value most in an RPG as the two are opposites in so many ways. I suspect Persona will better stand the test of time, since open-world fatigue makes it harder and harder to invest in games whose content far outlasts their gameplay and progression. Also:

Makoto > Ann >>>>>>>>>>> Yennifer >>> that one red-haired mage
Fight me.

@Sinton I don't know about the PSVR version, but don't let the 7/10 put you off of the remaster. Remasters tend to have lower scores since reviewers think about the prospect of buying a game twice at full price for only minor improvements. Since you didn't play the original and will likely get it much cheaper than launch price, these problems don't apply to you. If you're interested in Skyrim, give it a try on whatever platform you most enjoy.

@Throb I think there's maybe a couple damns and hells here and there, but not with any regularity. Every case involves a murder, so there's crime scene photos to review that can be a little bloody, though never gruesome or exploitative. There's a couple bustily-drawn pieces of character art, but no sexual themes to speak of. Important female characters are treated very respectfully and never sexualized.

I may be forgetting something as it's been a few years since I played the trilogy, but hopefully that helps!

@Nyne11Tyme BL1 is a little rough to go back and play now, but I really do hope that BL3 is more in the style of 1 than 2. Pre-sequel was so in love with its dialogue that it literally made you sit in rooms with nothing to do listening for minutes at a time on multiple occasions. 1 had a great lonely western atmosphere - you (and maybe a partner) against an unforgiving world. 2 made the series a meme-fest where you never have a moment of quiet. Still a great game, but feels super-dated in 2019.

Love P4G. Its chill small-town mystery is a perfect companion to P5's ultra high-stakes political thriller. I've made a few attempts at P3P, but never stayed interested long enough to beat it...

Played the trilogy on DS then replayed much of it on 3DS. Highly recommend if it seems at all up your alley. Like Danganronpa, but more mature and less "mature".

@ShogunRok One question - What the hell is happening to red sword woman's body? I cannot make heads or tails of it.

@Matroska Yeah, I guess 5 is the median score and sometimes average can refer to that, but the most common use is the mean of all numbers. If you're talking mode, 6 and 7 are both much more common scores than 5. It's hard for me to see it in a non-numerical sense when there's a gigantic number right next to the word.

FWIW, I think "mediocre" would be a great replacement for average in the scoring rubric.

"Average" feels like a misnomer for a 5/10 score, especially when the actual average review score from Push Square is a 6.7 according to metacritic. Since a 5 seems to be generally regarded here as a mostly negative review, maybe there's a more apt name for it?

Finally Reggie will have time to play his Galaxy Style New Nintendo 3DS XL. Dreams come true.

@get2sammyb Maybe 30 million? 25? They surely could've done better than they did with a 3DS-style re-commitment, but I get they had a successful home console to focus on and Nintendo didn't. I just wish the poor vita got even half as many good (non-port) games as 3DS did.

@tomassi Why do the NY Times and Washington Post get more breaking news stories from insider sources than, say, Vox? Bigger staff, bigger readership, more industry connections, better chance of making a splash. No shade to Push Square, but obviously a site like IGN is going to be a higher priority for publishers. More clicks, more hype, less likely to take a risk for the sake of a hot take.

P.S.: The Kotaku video gives a good metaphor for understanding KH as an outsider. Nothing to do with this other conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqnAx3gx99w

@tomassi Check out Kotaku's recent video on KH3. The last third is for you.

@Enuo That'd be cool, but I'm not sure how it'd work out with vita controls. You really need a good joystick to aim your dashes. Even the Switch's joycons felt imperfect to me.

Bummer, I was looking forward to this on vita. It's a shame the vita is so low-priority that we don't even get games that have already been successfully ported in other regions.

It seemed like they were already moving away from the importance of stat customization in DS3, where one build could optimally use like 80% of weapons. No need to keep complexity around for its own sake if it's not making the game more interesting.

@Clemerek There's a few moments in conversations that feel like non-sequiturs - lines that are probably accurate independently but don't really make sense within the back-and-forth between characters. I can't remember any specifically, but there were a few important conversations that were hard to follow as a result.

Other than that, a lot of lines like "it can't be helped" and "I hope we get along", which are accurate literal translations of the Japanese but aren't really said by native English speakers.

Overall I don't think the localization was bad at all. It did a good job of establishing the characters' personality for the most part doesn't stop you from following the plot. It just distracts from a few big story moments, which is unfortunate.

@Ryall Only played Golden, but I'm pretty sure it was mostly an end-game dungeon with additions to Marie's story and another final boss.

@R1spam I'd say 80 hours minimum if you listen to all the voiced dialogue. Less if you speed-read through or skip.

I really hope if it is an expanded version of the original, you can at least download as dlc and use old saves for new game plus. Or some extra end-game content you can go straight to with a late game save a la Bloodborne's Old Hunters DLC. I'm all for more Persona in my life, but it's a little soon for a fresh full play-through.

@eltomo Lol they just replace every time Ryuji says "effing" with the actual word and change nothing else.

@TheArt Open world is not a term I'd ever think of to describe P5. You're not wrong about the repetition though. Watching the anime, I kept thinking "Wow, that conversation went a lot quicker than in the game while conveying all the same information!" Still, I miss everyone's ramblings now that I'm done...

I'm ok with the dlc, assuming there's still a good number of songs and cosmetics in the base game (and nothing essential is missing). The total lack of cross-buy on everything is rough though.

@Rob_230 Thanks! Great news - this is definitely one I'm more likely to play on a handheld. Took me a year and a half to get around to actual Persona 5 for the same reason, which seems dumb in retrospect.

@ShogunRok Is there going to be a vita version available in the west? I keep seeing 'vita' in the ads, but can't find any kind of listing for a vita release.

@ShogunRok I can only hope this is some kind of come-to-Jesus moment for Bethesda. There's so much they're good at, but they can't continue to ignore their deficiencies while everyone else gets better.

Maybe TESVI turns out well, but at this point it's probably better to hope another developer gets into the immersive first-person fantasy RPG genre. There are probably fans who are more invested in TES lore than me, but I'd imagine most are ready to jump ship for another universe as soon as someone else does it better.

I felt the same way about Witcher 3 when I first played. I remember walking in tiny circles trying (and failing) to pick a flower. A few hours later, I was flower-picking like a pro.

I thought I would be set 3 years ago when I replaced my 500gb hard drive with a 1tb. Now I'm looking at usb hard drives and I'm afraid 2tb extra won't be enough...

@huntsman34 To clarify, my argument is not that Rockstar should not have coded a suffragette into their game where she might get hurt. I was trying to address the question of why Youtube would feel the need to pull this video in particular while allowing other violent video game content. And I blame the youtuber, not the developer.

And real-world context does matter. You can check out the comment sections under any of these videos for evidence of this context. There's a reason he calls her a "feminist", a word not even used in the U.S. at the time the game is set, instead of "suffragette" or just "woman". Hell, there's a reason he chose to kill this one particular character in multiple videos. And his viewers get it.

Shooting tons of nameless baddies is normal in video games. Torturing and killing a woman explicitly for being a "feminist" is not. In a world where real-life women get real-life harassment from angry gamers (often on youtube!), there's no comparison.

It looks...fine? Like Diablo on a phone? I don't get the anger.

I kind of feel like this is the mini-console for no one (apart from collectors).

If you're a casual fan who doesn't own a modern console but wants to feed your late-90s nostalgia, you'll probably be disappointed that so many of the most iconic games (Spyro, Crash, Tomb Raider, Silent Hill, PaRappa, etc.) are missing.

If you're a big Playstation fan and have a PS4, it's an even tougher sell. Several of the biggest games on the roster are available on PS4, some upscaled or fully remastered to look decent on a modern tv. There would be some allure if this were some kind of 'definitive' ps1 collection, but it clearly is not. You're better off buying a used psp or ps3 and getting the classic games you want through psn. It would be a cheaper initial investment and give you access to a wider selection of games.

Crazy, does anyone know whether these are the first gba games to get ps4 remasters? (I know the first western releases were ds, but still.)

Glad these will be available to new people for the first time. Endearing characters, interesting cases to solve, great localization.

@Wazeddie22 I think PQ might be a better entry point for you, but it depends on what you're looking for. PQ has all the p3/p4 characters and takes a lot of time in between dungeoning to let them interact. EO IV/V don't have much story and the party members are silent, so it takes a little imagination to get invested in your characters. For me, this also gives it a more pure sense of adventure, almost like a DnD game.

Growth in EO is all about gradual character building. There's a wide variety of classes and skill trees, so it's great if character customization and party planning in RPGs is your thing. PQ is still all about collecting and fusing personas, but you've got more options than usual since you can assign a sub-persona to each character to add skills to the ones they get from their canon persona. Both have great dungeons - PQ has themed areas like P4 and EO is known for natural environments like forests and caves.

You should be able to get any for $20 on the eshop, except maybe EOV since it's newer.

@Wazeddie22 I should add: if you've played Persona 3 or 4, Persona Q on 3DS is your best bet. It's got the most fun puzzles and gameplay IMO, but it will fall flat if you don't know the characters already.

@Ralizah I know, right? After playing EO IV and V, I tried Mary Skelter (the highest rated dungeon crawler on vita). It made me realize how much less interesting this type of game is when you don't have to think about your movement or weigh the risk/reward of exploring further.

@Wazeddie22 If you have a 3DS, try Etrian Odyssey V! It's very focused, hard to get lost.

@johncalmc I just finished Blighttown last night, and I can't exaggerate how big a difference the framerate was for me. The whole area felt so much more manageable with good performance and the ability to see more than a few feet around you clearly. I've probably played Blighttown a dozen different times, but this is the first time I feel like I have any lasting awareness of how it's put together. The entire area is soooooo much less of a slog than it was last gen.

@FoxyGlen That's true. Maybe better to emphasize that Endurance is powerful and shouldn't be ignored. If you start by going toward 20/20 then choosing a stat to emphasize, that still covers the majority of weapons.

A few more:

Don't invest in Resistance - You can get gear to mitigate poison. You're always better off leveling your health or a stat that increases damage output.

If you want to try out weapons, go quality - A quality build means aiming for 40 strength and 40 dexterity. This gives you access to the widest variety of weapons as only a handful need faith or intelligence to wield. If you're not going into the game knowing exactly what you want to use, best to keep your options open!

Pyro is the way to go - Unlike in DS3, pyromancy requires ZERO stat leveling to increase damage (only a little attunement for slots). The game makes it seem like pyro damage scales with intelligence, but this isn't the case. As a result, a build focused on non-magical weapons can still use pyromancy for ranged damage and self-buffs.