Sony Megathread 2023

[thepunkrockicon]

8 minutes ago, tristy said:

I've always heard bad things about X-2, but I've never played it myself. But it focuses on Rikku and Yuna, whom I both love, so I might have to actually give it a go one of these days.

X-2 is really fun, but it's a departure from the gameplay of X, which is probably why a lot of people don't like it. It seems like anytime Final Fantasy deviates from it's sorta formula, people don't like it. But it's pretty fun from what I've played of it

[gunnar hendershow]

FFX-2 is great fun but like most games with a job system it wears me out by having too many options. I think most of the dislike it got was because "video games are for big boys" was a common mindset back then. 

[Ruki]

I really enjoyed X-2. I am all about the job systems in games. 

[Schlitzbrille]

50 minutes ago, tristy said:

I've always heard bad things about X-2, but I've never played it myself. But it focuses on Rikku and Yuna, whom I both love, so I might have to actually give it a go one of these days.

It's a lighter-hearted affair than the predecessor and JRPGs by large are supercereal so....

 

Liked it precisely for that reason.

[Your Mom]

13 hours ago, Skummy said:

I loved 7-Remake - I had some objections to changes to the story, though fully understand why they were made - but I don't know how much sense it would have made to me if I hadn't played 7 to death in the past.

I don't really rate the MMO games, or really any Final Fantasy game after 9, but I will make a controversial recommendation: If you like the MMO gameplay but not the social aspect, give Final Fantasy 12 a go. I didn't really like it "as a Final Fantasy game", in terms of not hitting the notes I want from that series, but it's a decent RPG in its own right, and if you're coming in without the baggage of having played through the whole series, I imagine you'd like it.

Next to none. I had no idea what was going on for a very good portion of the last few hours

[gunnar hendershow]

The back part of FFVII Remake is a very, very big critique of the game's fandom and legacy. I mean the whole game does it from time to time but the end goes wild in a way Nomura only can. It just must be impossible to figure out what's happening if you have no familiarity with the original.

[apsham]

3 hours ago, Your Mom said:

Next to none. I had no idea what was going on for a very good portion of the last few hours

To be fair, my entire goal was to make sure Cloud got the cutest dress - so once I that part ended I was just going through the motions either way.

[Gabriel]

I am a couple of hours into The Witcher 3 now... and I am loving it so far. It's really given me a new appreciation for Henry Cavill's performance in the show, and it's been a ton of fun to mix the idea of being a mercenary with the idea of not taking any shit when conversing with the other characters. I ended up not liking what someone said to me and starting a big ol' brawl inside of a pub... then I thought I was done and went to leave and there were like fifteen soldiers all coming for me. Much fun to be had here, but I hate that they made me shave so early in the game. My Geralt is going to look homeless by the time I'm done with him.

[gunnar hendershow]

Geralt's beard grows pretty quickly in that game. Kind of a blink and you miss it experience if I recall.

[Skummy]

On 19/01/2022 at 23:55, damshow said:

The back part of FFVII Remake is a very, very big critique of the game's fandom and legacy. I mean the whole game does it from time to time but the end goes wild in a way Nomura only can. It just must be impossible to figure out what's happening if you have no familiarity with the original.

The ending stretch I mostly just interpreted as, "look, this isn't the same game" - establishing a different timeline, and a different "universe", so that they could freely chop and change the story from that point without people complaining (though they invariably still will). It doesn't help that it seems to tie in a lot of the expanded FFVII stuff, with all the spin-off games and whatnot, which tried to make Zack more of a thing than he ever really was, and that even I barely understand.

The main issue for me was how much Sephiroth shows up early on. He's all over the opening stretch of the game, while also making it pretty explicit that every time you see "Sephiroth" it's actually one of the men in black robes and not the real deal, and I don't think that's made clear in the original until much later. It feels like it foregrounds a lot of stuff that, in the original story, you don't find out until you get to Nibelheim at the earliest, and some things you don't find out until the Northern Crater. I get it - given the scope of the game only covering the Midgar section of the story, they couldn't really release an FFVII game that just didn't have Sephiroth in it at all, but it felt like it went too far in the other direction.

There are changes to the story I found interesting - Aerith comes across as almost a clairvoyant character in some respects, like she knows her fate and has a sense of what's to come far more than she did in the original - but yeah, not surprised to hear that it's barely comprehensible without having played the original.

[gunnar hendershow]

2 hours ago, Skummy said:

The ending stretch I mostly just interpreted as, "look, this isn't the same game" - establishing a different timeline, and a different "universe", so that they could freely chop and change the story from that point without people complaining (though they invariably still will). It doesn't help that it seems to tie in a lot of the expanded FFVII stuff, with all the spin-off games and whatnot, which tried to make Zack more of a thing than he ever really was, and that even I barely understand.

The main issue for me was how much Sephiroth shows up early on. He's all over the opening stretch of the game, while also making it pretty explicit that every time you see "Sephiroth" it's actually one of the men in black robes and not the real deal, and I don't think that's made clear in the original until much later. It feels like it foregrounds a lot of stuff that, in the original story, you don't find out until you get to Nibelheim at the earliest, and some things you don't find out until the Northern Crater. I get it - given the scope of the game only covering the Midgar section of the story, they couldn't really release an FFVII game that just didn't have Sephiroth in it at all, but it felt like it went too far in the other direction.

There are changes to the story I found interesting - Aerith comes across as almost a clairvoyant character in some respects, like she knows her fate and has a sense of what's to come far more than she did in the original - but yeah, not surprised to hear that it's barely comprehensible without having played the original.

So I took some of the stuff with Sephiroth to be them getting it all out there in case they didn't make a part 2. Also, as it turned out, it was Nomura's "last game" as he's now apparently more hands-off in overseeing future installments. 

And your interpretation of the ending mostly aligns with mine, I just interpreted it as being done that way to tell fans who have clung to the game and this universe for so long that it isn't theirs. And what they wanted from FFVII Remake may not happen (this might be especially evident in parts 2 or 3, given the nature of modern games recreating *all* the locales from FFVII is a tall order, and they also seem very committed to placing more focus on Wutai). The presence of Zack, and how that will play into the future installments, is extremely interesting but it was the part I looked at the most and felt "this fundamentally changes a ton of the game". So perhaps because of how I discuss games and media with people I read into all of it as them changing things and doing it in a way that expresses itself as an adversary of the agreed-upon sequence of events in FFVII. Which to me comes directly at established fans of the game.

[LL!]

I honestly just hate the final boss sequence of this part of the remake and having to do it all over again every time. Ugh. 

[gunnar hendershow]

On 21/01/2022 at 11:00, LL! said:

I honestly just hate the final boss sequence of this part of the remake and having to do it all over again every time. Ugh. 

That was a huge misstep. It's exasperated by playing on hard mode too, which while being an actual jump in difficulty (as opposed to just making everything take longer) is also extremely cheap at times and not in a good way.

[Dang117]

My ssd drive for extension has came today for my PS5, when I saw the rumoured size for Horizon Forbidden West I decided might be best to get one. From what I've seen seems easy enough to do but in the same videos I've seen people manage to snap the plate which frightens me, luckily enough it's one with a built in heatsink so I didn't have to order that separately 

[gunnar hendershow]

1 hour ago, Dang117 said:

My ssd drive for extension has came today for my PS5, when I saw the rumoured size for Horizon Forbidden West I decided might be best to get one. From what I've seen seems easy enough to do but in the same videos I've seen people manage to snap the plate which frightens me, luckily enough it's one with a built in heatsink so I didn't have to order that separately 

Care to share which one you purchased? Gonna have to grab one for myself soon.

[Dang117]

3 minutes ago, damshow said:

Care to share which one you purchased? Gonna have to grab one for myself soon.

Its the WD_BLACK Sn850 model, was the best reviewed and the added heatsink helped make the decision easier as people were saying they were waiting 2 to 3 weeks for the heatsink to be delivered 

[Gabriel]

So, UFC 4 was announced as a free game on Plus for February. I've completely fallen out of MMA, but if I'm not worried about being up to date on who's who, is it fun?

I imagine the career mode is still there, which is great, because I'll at least get that out of it... but are there any other offline modes worth trying out? More than that... can I still murder motherfuckers as Cro Cop?

[Bobfoc]

I played UFC 4 on Game Pass and quite liked it. It's still fun to play, although I don't recall it added a lot to the UFC 3 experience.

[LL!]

I haven't played any UFC game since the first one of this series so I'm excited!

[tristy]

I liked UFC4's career mode, but the training, as always, is super tedious. I can barely remember UFC3, so it might not be new, but you can create friendships or rivalries with your training partner(s), and befriend or talk shit about people on their version of Twitter (which leads to fights/feuds).

Oh, and friendly reminder that Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep isn't eligible for the PS5 upgrade if you claim it through PS Plus.