What game are you playing?

[wankerness]

I mean, I felt as satisfied as after playing Zero and Kiwami.

No hostess mini games for me, thank you. I find them pretty boring (in a "I can't even understand how someone would play this" way), and if - as you suggested before- I have to look up what I have to do to win, it's more than unlikely that I'll play those. I know there are more substories behind some of the mini games, but oh well...

But I really like the series and there's a million things to do in these games, I don't feel bad if I miss some of them. Also I may try to do some of the stuff I missed when I play them again.

No, you don't have to look anything up to do the hostess stuff besides MAYBE if you're trying to find some of the unlockable ones.

The hostess minigames are boring shit in many entries (usually all you do is talk to them and choose chat responses), but 0 and Kiwami 2 have this great RTS minigame where you have to assign hostesses to customers based on their skills on a timer and hit the PARTY HARD button at the right moment to maximize money spent by clients, etc. It rules. It's VERY active.

The minigame you have to look up to complete is the pocket racer stuff. That's not fun, the questlines are just good cause of the characters and dialogue.

Basically these games are set up in that there's often one or two minigames per character that the game is really trying to push hard, like there's a HUGE amount of plot connected to it.

0 - Kiryu - Property Management, Majima - Cabaret Club
Kiwami 1 - nothing here really. Some plot connected to pocket racer but not more than in 0.
Kiwami 2 - Kiryu clan, Cabaret Club (Kiryu clan sorta sucks)
3 - I don't remember, I don't like this game
4 - Nothing really, the hostess clubs are dogshit and are connected to a couple characters
5 - Haruka - basically her main plot IS a minigame plot, Saejima - hunting, Kiryu - crazy taxi, baseball guy - batting cage, Akiyama - none
6 - Kiryu Clan, some railshooter diving game, "bar conversations" - none are as in-depth as the main ones in 5 or 0
Judgment - Drone racing (blech)
7 - Mario kart ripoff, property management
Lost Judgment - There are a LOT, the whole mystery club thing forces you to engage with a lot of them extensively like robotics club, dance club, skateboarding, motorcycle racing, etc

 

[gabito]

Oh, I'm playing Yakuza 3 now. It feels outdated, that's for sure. It's a remaster and not a remake after all, and playing it after playing Kiwami 2 is really detrimental... but it's more of the same anyway, just outdated. It looks and feels like something in between GTA III and IV, I don't know. Pacing is different too.

But I really like how Okinawa looks, and I'm still enjoying the game though, just in a slightly different way. I just pretend the whole saga is a reeeeeeaaaaally long ass game, and some parts are better than others, like I do with Mass Effect.

 

[wankerness]

Oh, I'm playing Yakuza 3 now. It feels outdated, that's for sure. It's a remaster and not a remake after all, and playing it after playing Kiwami 2 is really detrimental... but it's more of the same anyway, just outdated. It looks and feels like something in between GTA III and IV, I don't know. Pacing is different too.

But I really like how Okinawa looks, and I'm still enjoying the game though, just in a slightly different way. I just pretend the whole saga is a reeeeeeaaaaally long ass game, and some parts are better than others, like I do with Mass Effect.

3 is the worst. 4 has some terrible sections but is a big improvement. 5 is where the series really gets good IMO.

Going through all of them is a good idea, just don't rush through the main plots too much. A huge part of these games' appeal and character development is through the goofy sidequests. You're really seeing all aspects of the characters instead of them just being hardcore action man all the time. That said some minigames should be avoided as much as possible (the fishing in 3 and hostess clubs in 4 are the worst of the worst that i remember).

3 is the worst gameplaywise and the plot is the least relevant, but it's also one of the best as far as Kiryu goes. Chill orphanage-running hawaiian shirt Kiryu is the best version of that character.

EDIT: Also 3 is the game that introduces Daigo Dojima! He's a very important character for the next few games (he also appears as a kid in a sidequest in Yakuza 0, and has limited involvement in 6). He's a very good character IMO. That's one of the things that's very disappointing about 6 that I missed on first playthrough (since I played the games in the order 0, 1, 6, 2, 3, 4, 5 cause 2-5 weren't yet on PS4 when I played through 0/1/6)- there are such amazing characters introduced in 3 and 4 and 6 just puts them all by the wayside and instead uses almost all new characters, even though it's supposed to be the big finale of the Kiryu story. I mean, what's there is still pretty good, but damn did I get invested in a lot of the side characters. Saejima, Akiyama, Daigo, all great characters almost on the level of Kiryu and Majima and Haruka.

 

[gabito]

Yeah, I like that "serious main plot, bonkers / silly side stuff" dynamic the games have.

I usually dedicate a few days exclusively to do every side quest I can find, and there are A LOT of those.

I tried fishing yesterday, it's terrible! Not that I enjoyed fishing in RDR2 or Deadly Premonition, but this was way worse.

 

[wankerness]

Yeah, I like that "serious main plot, bonkers / silly side stuff" dynamic the games have.

I usually dedicate a few days exclusively to do every side quest I can find, and there are A LOT of those.

I tried fishing yesterday, it's terrible! Not that I enjoyed fishing in RDR2 or Deadly Premonition, but this was way worse.

I'm pretty sure fishing in Yakuza 3 is the worst fishing minigame I've ever played in any game, ever. That's really saying something with competition like Nier and Stardew Valley and Persona 5. All the pain and boredom and constant failed casts and escaped fish of the worst of the worst, combined with the insane choice to make you use a consumable bait EVERY TIME YOU CAST no matter what happens!

 

[p0ke]

Having a kinda weird time with Final Fantasy VII. I just beat Materia Stealer (the big spider thingy in mt. Nibel), and that particular fight was easy af, whereas I've always had a hard time with it before. Didn't even matter that Vincent had the limit break on throughout the fight, randomly and uncontrollably casting fire on it which healed it for almost 1000hp each time. But before that I was struggling in the mansion, I died like 7 times there. I don't think I've ever died there before. On the first attempt I beat the monster in the safe immediately, but then somehow forgot to take the key and realized it in the basement, and then having to run back and forth I got killed by the Yin/Yang enemy. And the next 6 or so times I couldn't even beat the safe monster

Also I've noticed a bug in the port -> the ATB: Wait setting doesn't work. On the original version with it on, you could go and take a dump with the game on, and the enemies wouldn't do anything in the meantime, but now I have to be super fast to do my thing so they don't beat the crap out of me while I'm browsing the menu. It gets especially annoying when browsing Enemy Skills etc that's a very long list. And of course with the 3x speed option on the faster enemies get like 5 hits in on me before I've chosen my move.

 

[wankerness]

Yeah, the speed boost thing greatly increases difficulty on FFVIII for that reason, too. The enemies don't stop attacking when you're in menus so it's definitely not in your best interest to have it on 3x speed in any fight of any difficulty cause you're going to be taking a lot more damage. I guess there is a wait setting on FF8 that's turned off by default - I'll have to turn it on! If it works, that is.

That said, even if it doesn't, it's still worth it to toggle 3x speed every single time a GF animation starts up, and to turn on that thing that makes boost happen automatically, cause goddam is combat tedious otherwise. And with random battles on the overworld where there's no difficulty involved I just leave it on all the time, you can easily eat an extra few attacks with no threat to your life.

EDIT: I read about FFVII's "wait" function - evidently combat pauses when you're in a SUBmenu, but doesn't when you're on the screen that shows a list of actions. Ex you hit magic and start looking for a spell, enemies pause, but you leave it where you choose between item and magic they keep on hitting you. Seems crazy to me, but that's how it was in the original and still is now and it's amplified when you're using the 3x speed.

EDIT 2: I read some more. FFVIII works identically to FFVII. I guess I did have wait on. It just doesn't help much. Most of the time I spend in "menus" is trying to figure out exactly what target I have selected with a spell, and trying to figure out where your cursor is on screen isn't an action that stops enemies from attacking, cause you're out of the spell menu at that point cause you chose it already. It's kind of BS.

Apparently GF boost is horrible on PS4/5 too cause unlike Switch/Xbox, the PS has no "select" button and instead you're expected to hold down the touchpad button every time you summon something, which is pretty wonky with the way that button works. Ugh, I think maybe I just will not worry about boosting GFs ever and cheat with the R3 ability instead.

 

[p0ke]

Ok, maybe I just hadn't noticed that before because there was no speed boost. I don't recall the same thing happening when playing on an emulator with speed boost though, and on those the speed was much more than 3x (I think it just completely removed the fps limit and did as fast as the system could do). It's been more than 10 years since I played it though, so I could've just forgotten.

And yeah, "aiming" is exactly what I spend most time in too, it's pretty hard to hit the exact enemy you want when there's many of them in a diamond formation etc. and sometimes I end up hitting my own party when I click in a hurry.

Another enemy I had trouble with was the Gi Natak or whatever the boss in Cosmo Canyon is called - I know it dies instantly of Life or a Phoenix Down, but I just kept missing until only one character remained I don't recall Life ever missing on the original version! (unlike phoenix downs)

Oh and by the way, one thing that really sucks with the speed boost is that it doesn't apply to cutscenes. I'd much rather just skip those alltogether, they were cool in 1997 but now they're just tedious af.

 

[wankerness]

Are the cutscenes in FF7 long? The ones in FF8 so far have been like 1 minute tops, and most are way shorter than that. Hooray for harsh storage limits on games back then, I guess.

 

[p0ke]

Are the cutscenes in FF7 long? The ones in FF8 so far have been like 1 minute tops, and most are way shorter than that. Hooray for harsh storage limits on games back then, I guess.

Not really, they just feel really slow after running around at 3x speed There are a few slightly longer ones, but they're a bit further in the game.
Most of them are really short, but it just feels very redundant to slow down to see a super pixelated Sephiroth walk through flames for example...

 

[wankerness]

Not really, they just feel really slow after running around at 3x speed There are a few slightly longer ones, but they're a bit further in the game.
Most of them are really short, but it just feels very redundant to slow down to see a super pixelated Sephiroth walk through flames for example...

Eh, I remember the day after that game came out and my one friend with a PSX was freaking out like "OMG IT'S JUST LIKE PLAYING A MOVIE" like it was the greatest thing ever made. The cutscenes were there for spectacle (and also cause the character models look like absolute garbage so you needed them to show much expression, and the backgrounds were all prerendered so you couldn't do anything with a moving camera), they just didn't age well. But yeah, they are pretty bad and the FMV thing seems pointless in the post-2010s era of most cutscenes being rendered using the engine.

 

[CrushingAnvil]

I started playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Anomaly the weekend I got my Caparison Dellinger. I have played the game more than I've played the guitar - it's incredible. It's free too.

 

[Mathemagician]

I downloaded the demo, haven't played it yet. I wasn't real optimistic anyway.

I'm currently playing Code Vein cause it's in the conversation right now due to being a PS+ monthly game. I'm currently halfway through the infamous level that's high on many who've experienced it's "worst videogame level of all time" list. And it is really bad!



View attachment 122578

What this 3D map of the level doesn't show are that a TON of those towers have locked doors that can only be opened from the back (if you approach them from a roundabout way ala Dark Souls). Or that, as you progress through the level, fewer and fewer of those thin walkways have guardrails, and any enemy that attacks you, even if you block, is highly likely to send you flying to your instant death if you aren't keenly aware of placement at all times. Or that there are only like 3 checkpoints in the whole thing and everything looks exactly the same!!!! Also, the majority of the walkways have things blocking you or holes in them so the paths are all about peeking over the edge of ledges to see where you can safely fall to the level below to actually progress. I spent 2 hours last night and only died a couple times just getting through the first HALF of the level (it teleports you out to a new level after you beat the midway boss, for some bizarre reason).

The game at least has a minimap that shows a trace of where you've been (it shows all your path that you've been, but fades over time, like it only traces X number of your footsteps, so if you meander around in circles for way too long it will eventually erase your early footsteps and thus you won't be sure where you've been and where you haven't).

This game also has ENDLESS fucking cutscenes that are just horrible. And all these "memory" segments where you have to very slowly plod through a landscape of memory tableaus while voiceovers happen. This game's plot is so incoherent and also boring I can't even believe it.

The gameplay is actually pretty fun, though. I'm playing with a Zweihander and it's almost as satisfying as doing so in Dark Souls. The game also has an interesting system where what you'd think of as "character builds" with different stat distributions are tied to equippable items, so you can in practice pretty much instantly respec at no cost any time you switch your "code." It's a good idea. I just have not made any use of it at all cause the Zweihander blocking build is too much fun/too effective.

Additionally, you have a companion that follows you at all times unless he gets killed, which really isn't that often - the AI is not amazing, but it's infinitely better than Ashen, where on later levels your help was guaranteed to suicide off a ledge almost immediately and leave you screwed. It makes the boss fights probably too easy since you can pretty much just block most of the time while your companion does all the work. But the actual boss fight mechanics are pretty nasty, more like Nioh than Dark Souls in terms of speed and damage dealt.

Also of note is this game is super anime style with characters, and has one of the better character creation tools I've ever seen. Though the game really tries to funnel you into making either a huge boobed anime waifu or a prettyboy anime guy. There's just a ton of variation within those templates and it's WAY better than anything Fromsoft has ever pumped out. Too bad about the Anime style.

I actually really enjoyed the game. The plot is super Anime/JRPG all over the place but it does make sense. You just have to pay attention to all the exposition because yea it does the Tarantino thing and shows you “history” from multiple points of view all out of order.

And that level was a bitch, but it was also the most From-like level in the game because the rest are mostly anime-rpg hallway simulators. The combo system is pretty fun too putting together builds etc.

 

[wankerness]

I actually really enjoyed the game. The plot is super Anime/JRPG all over the place but it does make sense. You just have to pay attention to all the exposition because yea it does the Tarantino thing and shows you “history” from multiple points of view all out of order.

And that level was a bitch, but it was also the most From-like level in the game because the rest are mostly anime-rpg hallway simulators. The combo system is pretty fun too putting together builds etc.

I finished it. I liked it overall, even though the final boss was INFURIATING. I beat all of the optional bosses and nothing even came close to being as hard as the last boss, which is funny, cause almost everything I read anywhere online talked about how the last boss was much easier than the few before and especially the optional hard version of Cannoneer/Blade Bearer. Just something about the boss being HUGE to the point where you couldn't possibly get out of his range on his constant huge AOE slams and bullshit with a heavy equip load made it infuriating, doubly so cause he was strong to all elements so my "light" build was worthless cause it didn't do any damage. Not to mention the lock-on with him is up there with the worst in Dark Souls history, with the lockon point being somewhere in the middle of his massive bulk so the camera is never anywhere that makes sense (and swinging a huge 2H without lockon is possible but definitely far more difficult). I eventually just gave up on trying to do it "right," specced into that skill that makes you do super damage for 3 minutes and then die and went all out and killed him JUST before the buff wore off.

The combat system's got a ton of fantastic ideas but some huge problems. The biggest problem is just maneuvering the menus for finding abilities, especially if you haven't "mastered" them (made them available to other specs). Like, I'd frequently have to go through every blood code one by one and doing a cursor over each ability until I finally found the description of the one I was looking for. There's no easier way to do this that I could find other than looking it up online every time you wanted to find an ability that wasn't mastered.

The other huge problem is the stats are as confusing as hell. Equip loads in particular are just nonsense. The interplay between veils, codes and equip loads is hard to process and really annoying since many of the codes have you exceeding the equip load no matter what unless you both wear light armor and have a light weapon, let alone allowing you to be at a "light" load for the huge boost to mobility.

I didn't experiment with anything other than a 2H smash build until I was on the last like, 4 bosses of the games. Then I finally engaged with mastering abilities, putting together caster builds, etc. I used a caster build on the hard version of cannoneer/blade bearer and some of the other "depths" areas and it was fun. A very different system than Dark Souls, and superior IMO - you basically have equippable spells with very limited stock, but you can regain stock just by doing melee attacks once you run out of your spell resource. Plus you can do "drains" (backstabs, parries, or charge attacks with X) that restore even more and also increase your max.

I have no doubt the plot makes sense if you have the attention span. I absolutely did not. The voiceacting is really cringey, the dialogue is wretched, and there's a TON of exposition. Plus those constant flashback scenes where you have to walk at the slowest speed possible through a flashback memoryscape frequently still gated by dialogue that is even slower than your walking speed.

Regardless, the good, unique gameplay ideas in this game and the relative polish of the look and combat compared to most soulslikes has me giving a lukewarm recommendation. Just, the Cathedral and the Spire are total bullshit levels that I hated. And I don't think The Cathedral is very fromsoftian cause there's only one possible linear path through the thing, it's just incredibly confusing and hard to memorize cause everything looks the same and the level is insanely complex. But it's still linear! Just not as obviously as all the other levels which are what you said, basically hallway simulator 2000 with a fair amount of "here's a branch where one path leads to an item and the other path continues on."

 

[Mathemagician]

Yeah it definitely had good ideas. Like it’s obvious the team was trying to take from Dark souls and build on it. Versus just try to copy paste a mid evil sword and magic game with long animations. I definitely wish the level design was better but honestly I know better than to expect that from anime game with an anime art style. The general fan base for those games just doesn’t seem to care. Too bad it didn’t do very well, they “next” game by them ended up not being a sequel but a new world altogether. I actually stopped playing just before the final boss. I wanted to master everything for the trophy then got distracted by life. Now it’s been a year and “I don’t remember what my buttons do” lol. Oh well I’ll just watch it on YouTube.

 

[CTID]

ended up picking up the remake of Resident Evil 4 and was having a grand time with it for the few hours i played last night, but was having issues with it crashing. did some research into it (with what little discussion existed last night) and the conclusion i can draw from it is: nobody has any fucking clue what the deal is. some are saying it's a vram issue, some saying it's a ray tracing issue, others are saying it's corrupted files. who knows. i have a 5600x and a 2080ti and the game will run great and then throw a D3D error after an hour. hopefully they fix it soon, because it's been great other than that

 

[wankerness]

From what I'm hearing the remake is much slower-paced than the original. Maybe I should download the original PC version and this mod instead!



Speaking of slow-paced, I've been going through FF8! I have a pathological need to drain 100 of every spell. There are a few things that are driving me insane about this game:

1) You can do a "junction exchange" which shifts all GFs AND all spells straight from one character to another, but if you want to do anything more granularly, you have to do every single spell one at a time. Also, you'd better not forget which character has which GF or things get scrambled bigtime. Plus sometimes your characters get GFs taken off them, but not their spells, so then you have to try and track down exactly where the spells are. It's a lot! It would be much easier if it was viable to have all six characters with unique loadouts, but it really isn't unless you want to really end up with horrifically balanced parties, since there's also no way to turn off EXP sharing for certain characters. Like, where I'm at now, Squall/Zell are 22, Selphie is 18, Rinoa/cowboy are 13, and Quistis is 10, and any time I have a lowbie with higher leveled people they don't seem to "catch up," instead the higher leveled people seem to level at the same pace so the gap just remains. Plus it seems like enemies scale to the highest level dude you have. Not that level matters THAT much if you're doing junction exchange since most of your stats come off junctioning.

2) I HATE the battle UI, the biggest problem is when you can't tell who the hell you're casting a spell on. Like, in one battle I was struggling to see where the cursor was (I was trying to resurrect someone who was down), and they were completely blocked by the UI, if I pressed select to hide the UI the cursor also disappeared, and I couldn't find a way to force that interface where it shows the character names with cursors across the bottom (that's visible when like, GF animations are happening). So I just had to roll the dice and hope the phoenix down was applied to the dead character. And of course, it wasn't! This UI was programmed for little CRTs and needed more QOL features. Just a simple resolution bump during battles probably would have eliminated this problem.

3) The leveling system is stupid since the game gets harder the more you level, flat-out. Every single guide anywhere on the internet is like "DON'T LEVEL, EVER! JUST KEEP USING CARD TO END EVERY BATTLE!" It reminds me of Skyrim, but far worse. However, I think the way the game's tuned you could probably level everyone to 99 and still be able to beat it without TOO much trouble if you properly junctioned everything. It's just dumb that the difficulty is so incredibly linearly scaling to your level, ALL monsters scale up relative to you. I don't like RPGs where your character doesn't get better!

 

[KnightBrolaire]

I'm gonna check out the diablo iv beta today and see if I want to preorder.

 

[CTID]

From what I'm hearing the remake is much slower-paced than the original. Maybe I should download the original PC version and this mod instead!

not sure i necessarily agree with that. i think it atmospherically leans more towards horror than the original did, but the combat and flow feels about the same to me. that said, it's been ages since i've played through the original, so this could be a case of it "being how i remembered it"

there's a demo on steam that's the intro up through the end of the first village fight, i think that's pretty indicative of how it's been for me so far

 

[p0ke]

was having issues with it crashing. did some research into it (with what little discussion existed last night) and the conclusion i can draw from it is: nobody has any fucking clue what the deal is.

As far as I remember the original (PC) version used to crash often too. So often actually that I never finished it because I lost a lot of progress a couple of times, and I recall really liking the game otherwise...