Community MetaSteam | October - The size of this adventure is spooky

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FunnyJay

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Is there any game out that is like SimCity, meaning a city builder in more-or-less modern city times? Besides SimCity itself and Cities:Skylines. I wanted to try cities but I'm just less and less a fan of paradox and their "the DLC costs another 300 $" ways. I also know of Metropolis 1998, which looks really lovely but it's far from finished.
I was just going to say that I've had my eye on

but I haven't played it myself, so I do not know how it stacks up.
 
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Mivey

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Atlus posted some info for folks not able to get the prologue demo save into the retail version, and they have a dedicated thing for doing it on Steam Deck in desktop mode. This reminds me of how Durante and PH3 had a workaround for dealing with an issue like this with Zero to Azure on Steam Deck.
Due to how individual games and their save files are isolated on Steam Deck / Proton, I wonder if Valve couldn't offer devs some tools to "connect" their owned games, and allow a game to access files of another game (including its cloud saves). Of course this has to be done carefully, but as long as the same developer owns both games, there shouldn't be any security risks here and it would make these kinds of save transfers massively easier for Steam Deck users, who currently have to to go Desktop mode and follow a 13 step guide.
 
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edin

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I also would like to have such a game; just a modern SimCity-like without all the resource & traffic management of Cities Skylines or other city builders. Unfortunately nowadays it often comes down to that and thats just too much of a hassle for me personally; I would love a simple game like SC2000/3000 without having to worry about having enough ore, oil, lumber or whatever to unlock some sort of building.

Alas, I dont know of any game that is really like SimCity, most games have some sort of "spin", and most games Ive tried arent very good either. But these are the ones that come to mind, your milage may vary.




These two are a bit older and as far as I know didnt review well; I never played them much




Ive only played them a little bit and couldnt really get into them



I liked this one but its also based on resources and unlocks. It does have a freeform mode eschewing all that, tho. And you can upload your cities and continue on mobile. Theres also a Pocket City 2 (featuring a first person walk-around-mode), but its not on PC yet.




Ive not tried these two


And Skylines is okay, and you dont really need all the DLC (however, during a sale, it might be a good deal to get some of it)
I love Pocket City 2. FWIW I asked the dev about a PC / Switch port and they told me this last year:

I do plan to create a PC version and an updated Mac version that isn’t just the iOS mobile build. The controls for desktops have different best practices which need to be accounted for. Since desktop is more powerful than mobile, I want to create higher tier graphics options as well. As far as consoles, I would love to make that happen one day too, but it would probably be further into the future.
Due to how individual games and their save files are isolated on Steam Deck / Proton, I wonder if Valve couldn't offer devs some tools to "connect" their owned games, and allow a game to access files of another game (including its cloud saves). Of course this has to be done carefully, but as long as the same developer owns both games, there shouldn't be any security risks here and it would make these kinds of save transfers massively easier for Steam Deck users, who currently have to to go Desktop mode and follow a 13 step guide.
I agree. I'd love for this because right now whenever I discuss game demos with save transfer on Deck, there's always that possibility that it won't read correctly. Speaking of Valve and cloud saves, what do we need to do to get Valve/Bamco to add them to DS2 and DS3? (and inti creates to Dragon Marked for Death).
 

Durante

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Due to how individual games and their save files are isolated on Steam Deck / Proton, I wonder if Valve couldn't offer devs some tools to "connect" their owned games, and allow a game to access files of another game (including its cloud saves). Of course this has to be done carefully, but as long as the same developer owns both games, there shouldn't be any security risks here and it would make these kinds of save transfers massively easier for Steam Deck users, who currently have to to go Desktop mode and follow a 13 step guide.
In our games Steam Deck users don't have to do anything :p
(We had to do some reverse engineering and write 10 lines of code)

That said, Valve offering an official mechanism would still be good.
 

Mivey

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I put 8 hours into the Metaphor demo. No way I'm starting over.
The save transfer works pretty easily (on Windows). Note that the very last battle in the demo (if you do not run out of the three day limit, but instead try to to do the story dungeon) will have to be repeated. It does not save afterwards, so you start again just before that fight.
 

Mivey

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Ys X: Nordics review embargo lifted. Our review (by Adam) here, my Steam Deck article here, and a console comparison here.


Looks like the game won't have DLSS/FSR and other TAA-based methods. This is interesting since the Cloud Leopard based version does feature these, so the team there went through the effort of modifying the engine to support outputting the necessary motion vectors. I wonder if CLE has contacts with Falcom (they are both based in Japan) and if those improvements could be "upstreamed" to Falcom's engine proper.
 

edin

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Looks like the game won't have DLSS/FSR and other TAA-based methods. This is interesting since the Cloud Leopard based version does feature these, so the team there went through the effort of modifying the engine to support outputting the necessary motion vectors. I wonder if CLE has contacts with Falcom (they are both based in Japan) and if those improvements could be "upstreamed" to Falcom's engine proper.
I'll have a bit more to say on this soon. Stay tuned.

I considered buying the CLE version (I bought their port of CS1 on PC to compare) just to see how it was, but it was delisted when I felt like doing it and then came back too close (or when I had PH3's Ys X (I forget the exact timeframe)) so I didn't bother.
 
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sprinkles

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Looks like the game won't have DLSS/FSR and other TAA-based methods. This is interesting since the Cloud Leopard based version does feature these, so the team there went through the effort of modifying the engine to support outputting the necessary motion vectors. I wonder if CLE has contacts with Falcom (they are both based in Japan) and if those improvements could be "upstreamed" to Falcom's engine proper.
Does Ys have SGSSAA?
 

Dragon1893

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The save transfer works pretty easily (on Windows). Note that the very last battle in the demo (if you do not run out of the three day limit, but instead try to to do the story dungeon) will have to be repeated. It does not save afterwards, so you start again just before that fight.
I played it on the Deck, hope there aren't any issues when I get the full game.

Gonna check out the Ys X demo. Really curious about this one.
 
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Ge0force

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The final boss in Remnants 2 is giving me a headache with the red color palette. I can't even see what's going on on the screen most of the time. Many people seem to like this boss fight, but it's driving me crazy...
 
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I played it on the Deck, hope there aren't any issues when I get the full game.
Just copy the files in the game folder before launching it so you don't create a save and then need to disable cloud saves.Or alternatively you can install both in a pc and the just launch the game and once you've confirmed the transfer go back there. Although that can be a bit overkill
 
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TioChuck

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The final boss in Remnants 2 is giving me a headache with the red color palette. I can't even see what's going on on the screen most of the time. Many people seem to like this boss fight, but it's driving me crazy...
I'm colorblind, I couldn't see shit during the fight, after 3 or 4 tries I got the gist of the animations and it became pretty easy even on apocalypse.
 
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KingKrouch

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Looks like the game won't have DLSS/FSR and other TAA-based methods. This is interesting since the Cloud Leopard based version does feature these, so the team there went through the effort of modifying the engine to support outputting the necessary motion vectors. I wonder if CLE has contacts with Falcom (they are both based in Japan) and if those improvements could be "upstreamed" to Falcom's engine proper.
If there's one feature I think that is sorely lacking in the PC version (setting aside the lack of TAA or temporal upscaling that you mentioned) is a button binding that will trigger a Steam screenshot. Reason being that SteamInput is disabled by default in this game on DualShock/DualSense controllers (as it's flagged as having native support), and now that I got the trackpad set up to be like the PS4/PS5 equivalent (I really don't like to use share as a select button, that's just an after-effect from antiquated Xbox 360 controller drivers like DS4Windows), I'd really like to be able to screenshot with the share button from my controller without having to enable SteamInput and essentially losing the ability to have trackpad and share as their own buttons again. I wonder how plausible this binding could be since Steam's API has a hook that allows the developer to trigger a screenshot on their own.

Also, in the starting town area, towards the upper area of it, I'm noticing really strange stuttering issues on my laptop (A 6850M XT/R9 6900HX setup running Linux), but I'm really unsure if this can be replicated in Windows or not. I'll have to test this on my Steam Deck, but outside of that one area, I'm getting an easy 120-140FPS a good chunk of the time at 3440x1440.

Outside of those two issues, this PC version of Ys X is really solid. I'm honestly surprised at the fast release cycle for PH3's ports given the quality.

EDIT: On my Steam Deck running Bazzite, I noticed that the game defaults to Xbox prompts rather than the Steam Deck ones, so there's likely a conflict with SteamInput or there's something up with Bazzite.
 
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madjoki

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23 000 games in danger of being delisted from Germany in a month.

For many older titles that released before the existence of this legal requirement, the developers have already back-filled their Content Surveys. However, there are still roughly 23,000 games remaining for which we have no Content Survey information, meaning that we do not have sufficient information to assign a rating.
 

Alexandros

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23 000 games in danger of being delisted from Germany in a month.

It annoys me so much when lawmakers legislate without the slightest regard for the people it will affect. How did no one think to say "hey guys, some games are years or decades old, no one is going to bother rating those and they will be completely gone" during the entire legislative process? Idiots.
 

edin

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If there's one feature I think that is sorely lacking in the PC version (setting aside the lack of TAA or temporal upscaling that you mentioned) is a button binding that will trigger a Steam screenshot. Reason being that SteamInput is disabled by default in this game on DualShock/DualSense controllers (as it's flagged as having native support), and now that I got the trackpad set up to be like the PS4/PS5 equivalent (I really don't like to use share as a select button, that's just an after-effect from antiquated Xbox 360 controller drivers like DS4Windows), I'd really like to be able to screenshot with the share button from my controller without having to enable SteamInput and essentially losing the ability to have trackpad and share as their own buttons again. I wonder how plausible this binding could be since Steam's API has a hook that allows the developer to trigger a screenshot on their own.
FWIW when I was playing Metaphor on Steam Deck (docking station) and used my Victrix PS5 controller (In PS5 mode, not PS4 or PC), it correctly detected it as a PS5 controller and the share button worked for Steam screenshots. I've not seen that happen in many games though.
 
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yuraya

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I can't believe how many Ys games there are.

I only played Origins back in the day and didn't even beat it.

Seeing so much more release on Steam since is crazy and overwhelming. Same with the Trails games.

There is no chance of keeping up. Anime can't be stopped.
 
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Mivey

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I only played Origins back in the day and didn't even beat it.
Thore are pretty short (and amazing games). Indeed, all Ys games before Ys VIII are super short, like at most 30 hours, and most of them less than half that.
It's only 8, 9 and now 10 that are very long, though with 9 they did reduce its length by quite a bit compared to 8, maybe 20% shorter, even for completionist.
 
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dex3108

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We really need to see Durante and his team tackle some of these big AAA games to really see if devs truly can't do anything to achieve better performance or it is something else. As far as I know team that ported GoW games to PC is also small one, up to 10 people i think.
 

toxicitizen

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Goddamn, Metaphor really is straight up Fantasy Persona. I'm actually shocked by how identical the structure is.

It's also just as bad as Persona. And by that I mean that I played for just a few hours yet somehow the entire day disappeared into the ether.

Seriously. My physical CE got here at like 3PM today. It's now 4AM. I feel like I went into a fugue state or something lmao.

 

Hektor

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Goddamn, Metaphor really is straight up Fantasy Persona. I'm actually shocked by how identical the structure is.

It's also just as bad as Persona. And by that I mean that I played for just a few hours yet somehow the entire day disappeared into the ether.

Seriously. My physical CE got here at like 3PM today. It's now 4AM. I feel like I went into a fugue state or something lmao.

30 hours in I wouldn't even call it Fantasy Persona.

The structure clearly is Persona's, but the combat system is the much bretter Press Turn System from the mainline SMT games. Its difficulty is also way more in line with those.

And the lack of demon collecting feels less like Persona or SMT and more like Digital Devil Saga.

Really taking elements from all their games. I like that a lot.

My biggest issue with the game so far are the Dungeons being very, very simple, and the archetypes just not having the personality SMT Demons do.

If it had Dungeons like Nocturne it would instantly be an all time JRPG classic.
 

edin

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We really need to see Durante and his team tackle some of these big AAA games to really see if devs truly can't do anything to achieve better performance or it is something else. As far as I know team that ported GoW games to PC is also small one, up to 10 people i think.
It won't happen but I would love it if Bandai Namco could hire PH3 to fix Elden Ring on Steam. I'm not happy with that PC port really. At least AC VI was excellent (imo).
 
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Mivey

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30 hours in I wouldn't even call it Fantasy Persona.

The structure clearly is Persona's, but the combat system is the much bretter Press Turn System from the mainline SMT games. Its difficulty is also way more in line with those.

And the lack of demon collecting feels less like Persona or SMT and more like Digital Devil Saga.

Really taking elements from all their games. I like that a lot.

My biggest issue with the game so far are the Dungeons being very, very simple, and the archetypes just not having the personality SMT Demons do.

If it had Dungeons like Nocturne it would instantly be an all time JRPG classic.
Comparing Archetypes to Demons or Personas is the wrong take. I think it's Hulkenberg who comments in-game how they look like armour. They are things your characters puts on, and that allow you to shift operations and unlock new way of fighting, but otherwise the archetype is just not meant to be visually impressive, and don't steal the focus from the characters they are equipped to.

I also find the difficulty on this game to be kinda interesting: in some sense, the whole game is about finding ways to exploit the right archetype combos to utterly break certain encounters. A fight can go from "nearly impossible" to "lol, I one-hit everything" by just swapping out one or two archetypes. This is even more important than being in the right level, and even when you are many levels (like 5 or more) below an encounter, you can easily punch above your weight if you exploit the right weaknesses of enemies. This gets especially crazy once you unlock the ability to change Archetypes in the main menu ( I think you need rank 3 from More to do that) Almost wish the game allowed you to save certain Archetype layouts and quickly change between them, on the press of a button combo.

Agree about the simplistic dungeons, but I'm not yet far enough into the game to really judge that. If the second story dungeon is also mid, then yeah, that's probably it for the game. Not a huge problem though, the game outside dungeons is super nice and beautiful.
 
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「Echo」

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Mt. Whatever
All of my metaphor hype is gone the moment I learned it still uses Persona's calendar system and timed events.

Went from day 1 buy, to maybe next year when guides are out and optimized for time management. :sleep:

It annoys me so much when lawmakers legislate without the slightest regard for the people it will affect. How did no one think to say "hey guys, some games are years or decades old, no one is going to bother rating those and they will be completely gone" during the entire legislative process? Idiots.
It feels like there needs to be some sort of rapid education camp/plan/system for Government bodies all around the world to update these people on 21st century life and technology. The world is rapidly approaching a technological precipice and there are no laws or guidelines in Governing bodies to deal with it.

Digital Content management is still dictated by laws invented when CD's were the hot new ish.
 

Durante

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I enjoyed Metaphor more in the beginning before it turned entirely into fantasy Persona. (I'm enjoying it more again right now where I'm in a section that changes it up)

The fact that there isn't demon fusion is a huge plus in my book. Archetypes give you more or less the same gameplay effect (especially with the increasing number of skill inheritance slots) without the over-complication and busywork of fusion.

Also, in the starting town area, towards the upper area of it, I'm noticing really strange stuttering issues on my laptop (A 6850M XT/R9 6900HX setup running Linux), but I'm really unsure if this can be replicated in Windows or not. I'll have to test this on my Steam Deck, but outside of that one area, I'm getting an easy 120-140FPS a good chunk of the time at 3440x1440.
Hmm, we had stuttering on some AMD setups but that was mostly fixed by the sync approach I described in the blog post. But of course this was on Windows.

In the settings.yaml file there's a "use_query_gpu_sync" option, you could try disabling that and see if it changes anything (also potentially "thread_affinity_binding").
 

Line

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I can't believe how many Ys games there are.

I only played Origins back in the day and didn't even beat it.

Seeing so much more release on Steam since is crazy and overwhelming. Same with the Trails games.

There is no chance of keeping up. Anime can't be stopped.
It makes sense when you think about how old the franchise is. Ys is older than Final Fantasy, and it's only the tenth mainline game (though they have many, many remakes that are not unlike FF7R, and had them since the 90s).

They don't release that many games on Steam either, they didn't have to compress the release schedule like Trails did in a long, long time. The first Ys games were released 12 years ago on the platform... :astonished-face:
 

Stone Ocean

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And the lack of demon collecting feels less like Persona or SMT and more like Digital Devil Saga.
My initial impression was straight up "Oh this is like they made DDS3 and added some Persona elements to it"
 
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KainXVIII

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Ys X demo works fine on my pc (additional thanks for deadzones settings), but afaik there is no vibration on DS4 with default connection mode (maybe i need to force steam controller mode), also DS4 icons would be nice too, i don't understand some of the Dualsense buttons lol, like start and select
 
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Arc

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Loving Metaphor but if I were to lob a critique it's (story/dungeon spoilers)
Louis's airship was disappointing. There are janky stealth and air riding sections with a whopping three battles. Outside of that you spend two weeks goofing around with side content while waiting for the story to progress. It felt like Futaba's arc where there's a large block of dead time except the dungeon is a whole ball of nothing

I also find the difficulty on this game to be kinda interesting: in some sense, the whole game is about finding ways to exploit the right archetype combos to utterly break certain encounters. A fight can go from "nearly impossible" to "lol, I one-hit everything" by just swapping out one or two archetypes. This is even more important than being in the right level, and even when you are many levels (like 5 or more) below an encounter, you can easily punch above your weight if you exploit the right weaknesses of enemies. This gets especially crazy once you unlock the ability to change Archetypes in the main menu ( I think you need rank 3 from More to do that) Almost wish the game allowed you to save certain Archetype layouts and quickly change between them, on the press of a button combo.
I find the game to be brutally difficult at points and probably the hardest Atlus game I've played other than SMT 3. At the same time it isn't very punishing since you can instantly restart fights and there is no danger of losing an hour+ of progress.

I'm curious to see how Regicide mixes things up, but sadly that's locked behind NG+ and I don't know if I'll have enough gas in the tank to bother with that after I finish the game.
 

PC-tan

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How is the English VA for Metaphor? The English VA for past ATLUS games have been enjoyable (Persona) is it safe to say it's the same for Metaphor? There are somethings where in some games the VA are just bad but when it comes to video games that seems to be more rare nowadays.
 

Panda Pedinte

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How is the English VA for Metaphor? The English VA for past ATLUS games have been enjoyable (Persona) is it safe to say it's the same for Metaphor? There are somethings where in some games the VA are just bad but when it comes to video games that seems to be more rare nowadays.
I wasn't a fan of the previous English VA in Atlus games, but I'm liking a lot the one in Metaphor.
 

Mivey

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How is the English VA for Metaphor? The English VA for past ATLUS games have been enjoyable (Persona) is it safe to say it's the same for Metaphor? There are somethings where in some games the VA are just bad but when it comes to video games that seems to be more rare nowadays.
Absolutely brilliant translation and VAs. Feels like the game was made with the English text in mind. The regional British accents for various parts of the United Kingdoms are great.
 
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PC-tan

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I got my Metaphor CE yesterday in the mail. I opened up my package and something I didn't release was that the game is rated T for Teen. That is quite shocking, considering how a big chunk of ATLUS past titles for rated M for Mature.
 
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