Board 8 > transience's video game topic 55: it's '18 and Final Fantasy XV still isn't done

(+) Yeah! (+)

Speaking of bad game design - I'm playing Fire Emblem Echoes right now. Almost everything about it's game design is questionable at best. I'm still having a lot of fun with it though, simply because the gameplay is fun even though the mechanics are totally off. The presentation is very good, maybe the best in the series. Artwork, music, and voice acting are all top-notch. The writing so far is mostly solid too, although I heard that dips later on.
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The Mana Sword posted...

I dont find the exploration particularly interesting, both because the entire map is already revealed once you enter the area, and due to the fact that half the time what you find is a field skill point that you probably dont have the right blades for.

The Mana Sword posted...

I still think the combat lasts far too long for its own good and actively dissuades me from engaging in it. Im tired of aggroing a bunch of monsters when Im just trying to get from one place to another and forced into minute long fights that I dont find particularly engaging because each encounter just ends up being the same rotation of skills and abilities as the last.

I feel like we're playing different games. Exploration is so much better than in XB1. Areas are less linear, more dense and vertical; they require you to get out and think about your pathing. It's a lot like X in that regard, but on a smaller scale. I do agree that the lackluster map and lack of a hostility meter are big QoL downgrades, but as far as pure level design goes its a big improvement.

And re: combat, I don't seem to be having the same issues as you. Between driver combos, elemental orbs, building up trust with my Blades, I'm taking down the enemies I fight pretty easy. I don't have a problem aggroing enemies either, because I either outrun them if I don't want to fight, or just pull a single enemy if it's too hard to get them out of the way.

The Mana Sword posted...

but I hear that gets better once you get off this first main continent

you heard wrong

the next continent is better than every single area in XB1!
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Maybe my copy of the game is broken then, I dunno!

I keep trying to give the game a chance but during a 2 hour play session today I found myself saying Im not having any fun at all for the majority of it.
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Its also entirely possibly that my taste for this kind of game has completely changed since I played X1 6 years ago and I wouldnt like that much either if I played it today.
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The nice things about X1 areas were:

1. Each are was big and evoked a sense of wonder without being so big that you spent a really long time in each one, which would result in the wonder fading.
2. With the exception of Satorl Marsh (which is so damn pretty that it gets a pass), every area was connected to the plot and felt important. There was never an area just for the sake of an area.

No idea of X2 succeeds in those regards, but X definitely didn't.
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The map in X1 sucked worse than 2 though. I didn't like exploring at all.
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The Mana Sword posted...

I keep trying to give the game a chance but during a 2 hour play session today I found myself saying Im not having any fun at all for the majority of it.

preach it brotha
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between being sick the past few days and generally having a tough time putting together something worthwhile to read that hasnt already been said about most these games, Ive decided to forego writeups and a separate topic

so heres is the official top 10 game list of 2017

1. Nier: Automata
2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
3. Persona 5
4. Super Mario Odyssey
5. Tales of Berseria
6. Everybodys Golf
7. Pyre
8. Life is Strange: Before the Storm
9. Destiny 2
10. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle

Nier and Zelda are pretty far above the rest, they are by far the two games Ive thought about the most after finishing them.
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and theres still a typo with only a few sentences, so you didnt even miss out on that
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that Tales game was such a nice surprise. I've liked parts of the post-Vesperia games, but Berseria was the one that finally put it all together and got it (mostly) right.
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Oh yeah I forgot that Berseria was a 2017 game. That would be #2 on my list. It's the only game I played that managed to surprise me with how good it was. Everything else either had a pedigree behind it or some degree of hype/word-of-mouth. Berseria blew my expectations out of the water. Made me excited for the next Tales game even though I know there's zero chance that lightning will strike twice!

I had fun with Destiny 2 but it tested the limits of my patience in a lot of ways. It probably doesn't matter to most people playing that sort of game, but the story was atrocious.
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yeah, berseria was a welcome surprise, especially coming off the heels of ff15, which it what I had played just prior.

I definitely never cared about the story in either destiny game. 2 fixed a lot of the problems I had with 1, and while it still wasnt enough to keep me coming back after about a month or so, I enjoyed my time with it much more.
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in other game news, mario kart 8 is still fantastic. might be the best MK game. I still dont like having 12 racers on the track, it causes a little bit too much item chaos at times for my tastes, but thats the only negative about it.
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I can't go back to 8 racers tbh.
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we got mk8 deluxe for Christmas and I can't bother to play it. it's good for keeping kids busy but it feels so vanilla and uninteresting.
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vanilla compared to what
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yeah that thing is the most frenzied, bombastic entry in the series. big band music, metal remixes of classic nintendo songs, 200cc speed, chaotic online races, f-zero tracks. if this is vanilla, mdma must be your resting state.
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8 racers is boring to play now, yeah.

Maybe 10 is a good compromise.
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I just mean it's so boring. you just hold a and turn left/right, throwing whatever item you get. I was into it a bunch of years ago but now it just doesn't engage me.

maybe it's more interesting than previous mario karts but that series hasn't made me feel anything since the original
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ah the old "left trigger right trigger" gambit
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maybe, I don't shoot people much
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Just beat Mario Odyssey (not 100%)

The end sequence was so incredible. Im SO glad I didnt have that spoiled for me.
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mario kart 8 was the only mario kart game i've played more than once. it was very pretty and felt good to control. it was fine. i don't really care much for racing games, of the kart variety or otherwise.

i played little nightmares. that thing looks and sounds real creepy in the best possible way. it really does have a nightmare aesthetic. up there with some of the best looking games of 2017. some very scary moments, too. but man did those imprecise controls coupled with the sorta fixed 2d camera angle and 3d space lead to some real frustrating parts that sucked out all tension. trial-and-error puzzle platforming doesn't work when you're trying to build atmosphere.

i don't play a lot of horror games, but fail states continue to be the biggest problem for me with that genre. sorta similar problem i had with soma and observer, games i enjoyed way more but also had parts where tension turned to frustration because of dumb looking monsters catching and instantly sending me to a game over screen.

zelda

cleared all 4 divine beasts. cleared more shrines. with the abilities gained from the former and the stamina and heart upgrades from the latter, there has been less friction in interacting with the world. it's great. i still didn't particularly like doing any of those main quests. wouldn't go so far as to say they were trash (i rarely do for anything really), but they didn't do much for me.

exploring tho. yeah, everybody was right about that. that's the fun part of this game. being able to climb anything in the open world is genius. i just like going around it. while the actual material rewards for going places have also been kinda disappointing, it has been good just seeing something interesting off in the distance, deciding to go there, and just traversing that space between.

i still avoid all combat because i still don't like it, even with the much more powerful weapons i've gotten. this is the first game i actually want an "explorer" mode for.
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Replaying Shiren the Wanderer since I put it on my SNES Classic, I think this might be the perfect video game. Maybe Torneko: The Last Hope is slightly better? Not sure if the added complexities are better or not.
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girlfriend and I were looking for something to play two-player on the switch and she decided she wanted to play sonic so we got sonic mania

sonic fucking sucks

happy new year
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the wife and I played snipperclips tonight, the demo

that was a hilarious few minutes that I don't think could last if we had the real thing
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yeah we tried snipperclips a while back. the first world or so is fun, but much farther than that and we just started getting annoyed with each other!

demo is a good place to stop
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try it with kids
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one of the the first things I said after our session was 'our kids can never know about this.'
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finished life is strange before the storm

oh man the lip syncing is so good now i love it

weirded out at first by chloe not being ashly burch. she really became that character. but this new va is growing on me.

david sounds a lot less dopey now and it's just way better.

i think i like this stupid talk back mechanic. hella chloe price.

the writing is also just across the board better. it's so easy to buy rachel amber being this irresistible ms perfect that chloe falls hard for without being cloyingly obnoxious about it.

knowing where this all ends for both characters makes everything all the more tragic. ugh. there's something to heading toward the inevitable while trying to make the most out of things that hurts me real good!

oh and yeah that dnd game was excellent.
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yeah I think chloes new VA did a great job. it stopped sounding weird to me after about 15 minutes into episide 1.
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The Mana Sword posted...

girlfriend and I were looking for something to play two-player on the switch and she decided she wanted to play sonic so we got sonic mania

sonic fucking sucks

happy new year

Sonic Mania multiplayer is awesome, what the hell?

The versus mode with the "Teleporters only" rule on is hilarious.
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I wasnt referring to the multiplayer specifically, I was painting with a far broader stroke

all sonic games are bad and always have been
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKK3J2h1nGA
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The Mana Sword posted...

all sonic games are bad and always have been

no i'm sorry this is a good one

I do agree with your wider opinion that the Switch is surprisingly lacking in MP games. I was looking for something I could play with the kids over the holidays on the same screen and found my choices lacking. Gungeon is a good co-op game, though.
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actually I rescind that previous statement

sonic all stars racing transformed is good
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my hot take on that game is that it's good and fills a niche on other platforms without a great arcade racer, but on the wii u it was just a pace car before mario kart 8 came out
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iiicon posted...

my hot take on that game is that it's good and fills a niche on other platforms without a great arcade racer, but on the wii u it was just a pace car before mario kart 8 came out

the pc version of sonic and all-stars racing transformed is a better game than mario kart 8 in pretty much every way. it's faster, more interesting tracks, less rubber-banding, better powerups

the wii u version is ass and runs like butt so i guess i can see forming a bad opinion on it there.
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I think I like sonic racing more conceptually (because mario kart is rubber banding to the extreme) but in practice mario kart is a little bit better.

I played mute city last night and had good fun with that, but I think that's more because it invokes the feeling of fzero more than anything with mario kart. I wish they'd put GX on the switch or something.
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i feel like a lot of people played sonic for 20 minutes and didn't give it a chance, that game has some of the slickest racing of any game, comboing drift boosts and transform boosts and stunt boosts across the different vehicles makes for a game that feels incredible to play.

i feel like most people pick it up and expect the boosting to be like mario kart, but it's way superior because it's built around actual drifting and not hopping imo

mostly, even if you like mario kart more, i think calling it a "pace car" is ludicrous, unless you are talking about solely that wii u version specifically
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The problem with me is that Sonic All-Stars is more of a "Racing" game than a "Kart Racing" game. It's good if you want a more traditional racing game, but the item use is underwhelming. They're just kind of there as minor powerups, whereas in Mario Kart you have to juggle racing well with using your items strategically. That makes it much more interesting to me, and in any case, I feel that trying to compare the two is pointless; they both play so differently that they're not quite in the same genre even though most people act that way.
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the items are extremely important to high level sonic play, i have no idea what you're talking about, the game is 100% kart racer. saying you dont want to compare the two is one thing but saying it's not a kart racer is silly
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I like Sonic Racing better than MK8, but I think Mute City might be my favorite track in either game
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finished life is strange: before the storm

i don't quite know exactly how i feel about it. i'm not sure i like where the plot went? but i guess i don't know where else it could have gone.

the very last thing was completely unnecessary!

i think i still feel way stronger about the original series, even though everything is smoother in this one. not to say this didn't have a lot of great moments. i really like every scene that was just chloe and rachel. i believe their relationship 100%. i appreciate how unambiguously gay they are for each other! it's a nice contrast to how i played max... straight and just had a bff thing with chloe in the original.

all the dnd stuff was great, too. i sorta wish i screwed around with the stage scene more. i had it in my head that it'd be like that scene in wolf 2! i just didn't wanna ruin it for rachel, which is kinda weird given the stakes in wolf 2 compared to this game, but eh, chloe would never deliberately make rachel upset! oh yeah chloe slowly raising her hand to her face with the current objective written on it so stupid and funny to me.
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I think the biggest criticism of the game is that it felt like more episodes were needed both in the middle of it and at the end. it's like they said "well, this is all we were allowed to do"
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packed up my Wii U today. Rip Mario Maker
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Mine is still hooked up because we bust out Smash and Mario Maker every now and then. Hopefully sometime later this year I can pack it away into my office so I can finally play Tokyo Mirage Sessions, or it becomes playable on CEMU.
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You all just need more HDMI splitters

Wii U
Switch
PS3
PS4
XBONE
NES Classic
SNES Classic
Apple TV
DirecTV

All hooked up at once on a TV with 4 HDMI slots

Also PS2 and Wii but those only take Component Cable slots
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Admittedly the XBONE did end up booting out the 360 though just due to shelf space concerns

It was either that or move my Amiibo collection

Sorry Microsoft
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The reason I don't play games in the living room is not due to a lack of inputs. I specifically need a smaller living room or a larger TV, because the distance I sit from our TV makes most games more difficult to play. Our TV is already big and relatively new so that one is a hard sell.
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