What game are you playing?

[SamSam]

I just had the most anticlimactic ending possible in Final Fantasy VII. I had the counter attack materia equipped, so instead of finishing Sephiroth with Omnislash, I just countered his initial attack and that was it

That happened on my first ever playthrough when the game came out

 

[wankerness]

I started up FFX HD. All the posters in 2015 were right! The facial expressions really do look a lot worse!

I am missing the 3x speed boost from the FF7/8 Remasters. And WOW does this game have way, way, way too many clunky voiceovers and cutscenes. I wish you could toggle the voiceacting to Japanese, or something, just so I couldn't tell exactly how bad it is.

Also, this game's soundtrack is such a gigantic leap over the previous games it's not even funny. It's like a combo of the best stuff from the older games and the more modern stuff I like so much on the very inconsistent FF13 soundtrack.

From what I'm reading it takes 100 hours to beat this damn game with all the content. I might stop in the middle to play "Like a Dragon: Ishin" which I bought cause the special edition is strangely on sale for less money than the standard edition and I like to support these guys' games close to launch as long as it's not a Judgment game.

 

[p0ke]

That happened on my first ever playthrough when the game came out

That must've been even more of an anticlimax back then It took me a lot of time the first time around, so I can't imagine how disappointing it would've been to win with a counter. I think I originally beat the game several years after it came out, it's a long game and without the recent speed up options it was slooooooow.
I didn't grind at all on my first playthrough, actually I escaped a lot because I didn't realize you would've needed the exp and just couldn't be bothered fighting. Somehow I still managed to get to the end, and I think I was on something like level 55 when I beat it, so you can probably imagine how tough the final boss fights were. I always needed a shitload of luck to beat anything, I recall even beating Ultima Weapon with only one member alive with like 1hp, and even that because the final attack missed or something And every boss was the same.

I started up FFX HD. All the posters in 2015 were right! The facial expressions really do look a lot worse!

Does it have facial expressions? I guess I just don't care about such things...
I started FFX HD some time ago too, and yup, the speed up option would definitely be great there as well, even though the game isn't anywhere near as slow as FFVII for example. I really liked FFX back when it came out and I still do, but somehow I just can't be bothered finishing it. The first time I played it, I borrowed it from a friend and he wanted it back after probably a week, so I really hurried to get to the end... And because of that I didn't do any of the side stuff, so I was too weak to beat the final bosses. Same as with my initial playthrough of FFVII really And I've had plenty of chances to play the rest of it later, but for whatever reason I never did.

 

[Jarmake]

Got bored of elden ring (the soulsborne games are much better when they're not in an open world environment, imo) and got back to DS3. I buried the demon bros with the demon prince and then slapped Father Ariandel and clapped Sister Friede's buttcheeks until they gave up and went away. So, next up is Champion's Gravetender & Gravetender Greatwolf and then Darkeater Midir and last but not least Slave Knight Gael. Then that is it, the whole thing is done.

 

[Alberto7]

Finished Sekiro NG+ with the Shura ending. This game doesn't get boring. Though I'll say that getting the XP necessary to acquire all abilities is indeed looking a daunting task. I may grind a little bit more before moving onto playthrough #3.

 

[MFB]

Got bored of elden ring (the soulsborne games are much better when they're not in an open world environment, imo) and got back to DS3. I buried the demon bros with the demon prince and then slapped Father Ariandel and clapped Sister Friede's buttcheeks until they gave up and went away. So, next up is Champion's Gravetender & Gravetender Greatwolf and then Darkeater Midir and last but not least Slave Knight Gael. Then that is it, the whole thing is done.

Having just finished ER proper for the first time, it's just too much in that game, and there's a very obvious loss of momentum after finishing the Capitol and then finding out, "oh, I need to go to this other place, and then there's still two more places required after that?" No thanks. I do feel a bit of a void at the moment, I think I need to finally commit myself to playing DS3 (I don't think I'll ever finish DS2 with the changes they made) so I can see how they all rank. I think right now I'd say, from best to worst:

Sekiro > Bloodborne > Elden Ring > DS1 > DS2

I imagine DS3 would probably slot in right behind Bloodborne, and I've never been able to play Demon Soul's so it's a wildcard.

 

[wankerness]

Does it have facial expressions? I guess I just don't care about such things...
I started FFX HD some time ago too, and yup, the speed up option would definitely be great there as well, even though the game isn't anywhere near as slow as FFVII for example. I really liked FFX back when it came out and I still do, but somehow I just can't be bothered finishing it. The first time I played it, I borrowed it from a friend and he wanted it back after probably a week, so I really hurried to get to the end... And because of that I didn't do any of the side stuff, so I was too weak to beat the final bosses. Same as with my initial playthrough of FFVII really And I've had plenty of chances to play the rest of it later, but for whatever reason I never did.

The characters have very expressive faces in the PS2 version - they were way ahead of their time and look great. In the HD remaster basically their mouth moves when they talk but they have the constant wide-open eyes and excited expression like creepy puppets or something. It really is a step backwards in tech. Everything ELSE about the character models looks way better! It's really bizarre. I can only imagine they realized it would be a lot more work than they felt like doing to completely re-do all of that. I think this remaster used entirely new models for the characters as opposed to say, FF12 where they just used the same assets cleaned up and upscaled and thus didn't have to worry about re-animating stuff.

Looking at a side-by-side comparison on youtube it seems like the key difference is that on PS2 their eyebrows moved (and eyes narrowed, etc) to signify more expressions, while on the PS3/4 version their eyes/eyebrows are in the exact same position no matter what their mouth is doing, so it looks very odd in scenes where characters are supposed to look determined or sad or something.

Apparently the X2 remaster actually bothered to fully animated the faces and thus it looks a lot better than X. It's going to be a while before I get to that one unfortunately!

 

[wankerness]

Having just finished ER proper for the first time, it's just too much in that game, and there's a very obvious loss of momentum after finishing the Capitol and then finding out, "oh, I need to go to this other place, and then there's still two more places required after that?" No thanks. I do feel a bit of a void at the moment, I think I need to finally commit myself to playing DS3 (I don't think I'll ever finish DS2 with the changes they made) so I can see how they all rank. I think right now I'd say, from best to worst:

Sekiro > Bloodborne > Elden Ring > DS1 > DS2

I imagine DS3 would probably slot in right behind Bloodborne, and I've never been able to play Demon Soul's so it's a wildcard.

The more I've played of them, the harder it is for me to rank them. Every time I go back to one my opinion on it seems to change. Like, something will bug me more than it did the first time (ex Bloodborne's framerate, its forcing you to teleport back to the house and THEN to where you want to teleport, or its boss runbacks being the worst in the non-dlc series apart from maybe DS1), or I'll appreciate something more than I did the first time.

In terms of time spent I've played Elden Ring by far the most, and I've done the most NG playthroughs of it as well. DS2 SOTFS is the one I've played through the most times if you count NG+s, and I've played through the regular DS2 twice too. I'd probably rank them like this, but the disclaimer is that I really like all of them. Besides Demon's Souls, which I need to play through another time or two to really get a handle on.

Elden Ring>DS2>Sekiro>BB>DS3>DS1>DeS

Dark Souls 3 suffers from the least interesting levels (IMO) while Dark Souls 1 famously suffers from the back half of the game being kind of bad. As soon as I hit Anor Londo my fun with the game massively decreases.

It's easier to rank things like best levels, best combat, etc. Sekiro's definitely got the best combat and it isn't even close. DS2 definitely has the best weapon/build variety pre-Elden Ring. DS3 has the best boss fights. BB has the best world/art design. Etc.

 

[MFB]

The more I've played of them, the harder it is for me to rank them. Every time I go back to one my opinion on it seems to change. Like, something will bug me more than it did the first time (ex Bloodborne's framerate, its forcing you to teleport back to the house and THEN to where you want to teleport, or its boss runbacks being the worst in the non-dlc series apart from maybe DS1), or I'll appreciate something more than I did the first time.

In terms of time spent I've played Elden Ring by far the most, and I've done the most NG playthroughs of it as well. DS2 SOTFS is the one I've played through the most times if you count NG+s, and I've played through the regular DS2 twice too. I'd probably rank them like this, but the disclaimer is that I really like all of them. Besides Demon's Souls, which I need to play through another time or two to really get a handle on.

Elden Ring>DS2>Sekiro>BB>DS3>DS1>DeS

Dark Souls 3 suffers from the least interesting levels (IMO) while Dark Souls 1 famously suffers from the back half of the game being kind of bad. As soon as I hit Anor Londo my fun with the game massively decreases.

It's easier to rank things like best levels, best combat, etc. Sekiro's definitely got the best combat and it isn't even close. DS2 definitely has the best weapon/build variety pre-Elden Ring. DS3 has the best boss fights. BB has the best world/art design. Etc.

Yeah, where you ended with ranking by 'best' is sort of how I've come to rank them as I find DS1/DeS to be the blueprint which everything else was then built on and tweaked. Like, I originally thought BB had the best environment, but the more I've played Sekiro, I find myself leaning towards the Land of Reeds and not the constant drear of Yharnam. Same for combat, as much as I like the fast paced nature of Bloodborne, I'll never deny a block system vs. dodge only, and IIRC you do get the ability to recover health from death blows so that acts as your rally system too.

I'd say my issue with ER are minor, barring the one major one where it feels like the game forces you into specific gameplays towards the end with boss fights (ie it seems like everyone ends up with the same handful of weapons to beat the game).

 

[wankerness]

Yeah, where you ended with ranking by 'best' is sort of how I've come to rank them as I find DS1/DeS to be the blueprint which everything else was then built on and tweaked. Like, I originally thought BB had the best environment, but the more I've played Sekiro, I find myself leaning towards the Land of Reeds and not the constant drear of Yharnam. Same for combat, as much as I like the fast paced nature of Bloodborne, I'll never deny a block system vs. dodge only, and IIRC you do get the ability to recover health from death blows so that acts as your rally system too.

I'd say my issue with ER are minor, barring the one major one where it feels like the game forces you into specific gameplays towards the end with boss fights (ie it seems like everyone ends up with the same handful of weapons to beat the game).

Sekiro's got pretty levels but I don't like the actual layouts. It's a weird mix of too simple (sections with caves that are practically hallways) and too confusing (trying to maneuver castle rooftops to find NPCs/building entrances while getting attacked by kite-riding whooping assholes). I also think it might almost suffer from too MANY checkpoints. I dunno. I would rank its level design towards the bottom. Art direction is a different thing, and I think it and Bloodborne are tops in that department. Demon Souls is high on that list. DS2 also has some striking levels here and there. I think DS3's are the most boring, lots of gray hallways there too.

DS1's major strength over the other games is the map. That interconnected map is one of the best metroidvania maps in gaming history and the way everything locks together was wildly ambitious and no other game Fromsoft has done since even attempted it. I mean, sure, sections of Sekiro and Bloodborne have shortcuts between levels, but in practice they're sort of irrelevant thanks to fast travel, and there are plenty of sections that are basically their own little islands in space. DS2 and 3 pretty much only had perfunctory connections between levels and might as well have been Demon Souls where you've got a hub and just teleport to entirely different "worlds" that have no connection.

 

[Ralyks]

I started up FFX HD. All the posters in 2015 were right! The facial expressions really do look a lot worse!

I am missing the 3x speed boost from the FF7/8 Remasters. And WOW does this game have way, way, way too many clunky voiceovers and cutscenes. I wish you could toggle the voiceacting to Japanese, or something, just so I couldn't tell exactly how bad it is.

Also, this game's soundtrack is such a gigantic leap over the previous games it's not even funny. It's like a combo of the best stuff from the older games and the more modern stuff I like so much on the very inconsistent FF13 soundtrack.

From what I'm reading it takes 100 hours to beat this damn game with all the content. I might stop in the middle to play "Like a Dragon: Ishin" which I bought cause the special edition is strangely on sale for less money than the standard edition and I like to support these guys' games close to launch as long as it's not a Judgment game.

What's funny is, I remember being kinda meh on FFX back on PS2, then played the remaster on PS4 and absolutely loved it. But the same holds true then as it does now: that voice acting is atrocious.

So, I jumped into Persona 4 Golden on PS4. Now THIS remaster Atlus managed to get right. Looks great, higher framerate is smooth as hell, and, well, it's freaking P4G. Wish they just gave this treatment to Persona 3 FES And ported that instead of P3P.

Also, my son and I discovered SpiderHeck. And now we have a new game to play together. So much fun.

 

[wankerness]

FFX is jarring when you see how the maps are so frequently just hallways. I guess it's the precursor to FF13!

The worst thing about it by far is the constant Tidus internal monologue narrating the game. It's SO bad.

The combat is really well-paced, the game doesn't really need the speed boost when you're in combat. I like that it's truly turn-based so you don't feel panicked to get through the menus, and I like that the animations are fast and immediately responsive. It's kind of the anti-FF8.

I really played it to death on PS2 a few years back. Like, I even did the final weapon stuff for everyone including that absolutely ridiculous "dodge lightning strikes 200 times in a row" thing. I am NOT looking forward to doing that one again! Especially cause I've heard the timing is a lot harder on the remastered version.

Anyway, I also started Red Dead Redemption for the first time. I'm stuck in the distant past! I was struck by just how uncompromising this game is with the AIMING. Seems like it was designed for M/K, but I know the game's also infamously not on PC even today so that couldn't have been the case. Guess they were just trying to funnel people into using deadeye all the time? Anyway, I'm impressed so far in the first hour or so. The voiceacting and stuff holds up, and the production values and designs were good enough that it still looks pretty good today.

 

[TheBlackBard]

This thread:
This game is awesome! *proceeds to list a shitload of annoyances*

 

[Alberto7]

This thread:
This game is awesome! *proceeds to list a shitload of annoyances*

Have you seen what we do to guitars on this forum?

 

[TheBlackBard]

Have you seen what we do to guitars on this forum?

No, I have, and looking at a lot of them makes me want their high spec shit taken away and be left with beginner gear and see how grateful they are after that. I just... I don't know, I understand some criticism here and there, but when see people say, "this 2,500 dollar guitar is shit" and there's no quality or playability issues, I'm just dumbfounded. Maybe, "cool, but not to my taste" but the complaining, Jesus Christ. I'd happily have some of the guitars and amps people complain about. Same with the video game thread. Some of the critiques in here are shit that I just really don't bat an eye at or care about. I don't know, maybe I'm not doing life right by not nitpicking every little thing.

 

[Alberto7]

No, I have, and looking at a lot of them makes me want their high spec shit taken away and be left with beginner gear and see how grateful they are after that. I just... I don't know, I understand some criticism here and there, but when see people say, "this 2,500 dollar guitar is shit" and there's no quality or playability issues, I'm just dumbfounded. Maybe, "cool, but not to my taste" but the complaining, Jesus Christ. I'd happily have some of the guitars and amps people complain about. Same with the video game thread. Some of the critiques in here are shit that I just really don't bat an eye at or care about. I don't know, maybe I'm not doing life right by not nitpicking every little thing.

Yeah I get that. I'll sometimes notice what people are critiquing, but like I never even noticed it until someone else mentioned it, and realized I don't actually care. I guess everyone has their things they can't live with/without.
Thing is, personally speaking, when I critique something, 9 out of 10 times I don't actually truly care about what I'm saying. As in it doesn't actually impact my enjoyment of the game or the guitar or whatever it is I'm bitching about. Food is a good example. It may be a little too sweet, or salty, or wtv, but idgaf I'll gobble it all up anyways and be a happy camper. Like I can tell good food from great food, and I can tell you exactly why if I try, but my standards aren't actually that high.

 

[TheBlackBard]

Yeah I get that. I'll sometimes notice what people are critiquing, but like I never even noticed it until someone else mentioned it, and realized I don't actually care. I guess everyone has their things they can't live with/without.
Thing is, personally speaking, when I critique something, 9 out of 10 times I don't actually truly care about what I'm saying. As in it doesn't actually impact my enjoyment of the game or the guitar or whatever it is I'm bitching about. Food is a good example. It may be a little too sweet, or salty, or wtv, but idgaf I'll gobble it all up anyways and be a happy camper. Like I can tell good food from great food, and I can tell you exactly why if I try, but my standards aren't actually that high.

That could be me too. I love really good food, really flavorful food, but I eat it the same way I eat fast food trash.

 

[wankerness]

This thread:
This game is awesome! *proceeds to list a shitload of annoyances*

What is there to talk about with a game besides what's good/bad about it, other than strategy or saying what you're doing in it or whatever, which also happens plenty here? There's nothing more boring than a thread called "what are you watching" where everyone says the title of the movie and nothing else. Or "it's great." or "it's shit." Like, OK, and then what? What's the point of posting if you don't want to talk about it?

If you'd played FFX and were NOT constantly annoyed by the omnipresent voiceover that you have to wait for all the time, I'd be shocked! I find it really interesting that I like the game despite this massive, in-your-face problem! It makes me wonder if that Forspoken game that everyone saw the cutscene from and immediately dismissed without playing could have in fact been worth playing.

 

[TheBlackBard]

What is there to talk about with a game besides what's good/bad about it, other than strategy or saying what you're doing in it or whatever, which also happens plenty here? There's nothing more boring than a thread called "what are you watching" where everyone says the title of the movie and nothing else. Or "it's great." or "it's shit." Like, OK, and then what? What's the point of posting if you don't want to talk about it?

If you'd played FFX and were NOT constantly annoyed by the omnipresent voiceover that you have to wait for all the time, I'd be shocked! I find it really interesting that I like the game despite this massive, in-your-face problem! It makes me wonder if that Forspoken game that everyone saw the cutscene from and immediately dismissed without playing could have in fact been worth playing.

Yyyyyyeah, I can't relate to the whole facial expression thing, I'm sorry. As I said before, I'm really not that nitpicky. I was focusing more so on the story and the mechanics. And I even said that I can understand criticism, it's just odd to me when it's like, "game is great, now here's a whole ass laundry list of issues," and it seems to me that that's more often the focus rather than what people thinks makes the game great. The negative often seems to outweigh the positive.

 

[wankerness]

Yyyyyyeah, I can't relate to the whole facial expression thing, I'm sorry. As I said before, I'm really not that nitpicky. I was focusing more so on the story and the mechanics. And I even said that I can understand criticism, it's just odd to me when it's like, "game is great, now here's a whole ass laundry list of issues," and it seems to me that that's more often the focus rather than what people thinks makes the game great. The negative often seems to outweigh the positive.

If you play two versions of a game less than five years apart and the upgrade has a pretty jarring difference, of course you’re going to notice. Kinda like MGS and the way they redid all the voice acting on the GC version. If everything’s a big improvement besides one obvious thing, it seems to warrant comment! But yeah, maybe noticing is a character flaw ? I grew up reading criticism, it’s how my brain is programmed.