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

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Dragon1893

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Apr 17, 2019
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If I were to dock some points for Metaphor, it is because of the protagonist's lack of personality.

Sure, we have a voiced protagonist this time around, but it still feels like the blank slate of Persona 3-4-5 protagonists. To put this in context with another Atlus game, most people had dismissed Soul Hackers 2 due to its limited scope, uninteresting story or whatever else, but at the very least, Ringo as the protagonist is uniquely her own character. She participated actively during bonding events. She took the lead whenever there's discussion or confrontation with the antagonists. And her relationship with Figue is one of the most important pillars in the story.

Our protagonist in Metaphor could use a more pronounced personality, in my opinion. Alain from Unicorn Overlord also suffered from the same malady. He was characterised as a charismatic figure that unites different people and races, but still have the personality of a wet blanket.
Ringo is fantastic. The whole cast is great, actually.
 

BardsTales

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Aug 8, 2024
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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)
Thanks for all the recommendations! Checking some of them out, and they seem to run on my older video card, nice.
 

Kvik

Crossbell City Councillor
Dec 6, 2018
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Downunder.
bsky.app
I haven't played other Atlus games so I can't really make comparisons, but I think the protagonist being this "vanilla" really works in the game's favor. It allows the focus to be completely on your companions and story without much distraction.
While I believe what you said has some merit, it is also not mutually exclusive. You can still have a focus on the companions plus a plot-driven story, including a protagonist with their own backstory/character arc.

Ngl, I don't get not playing a game you really want to play just because it has DRM
I think people have their own standards/tolerances about these things. It is still a valid point to make. Denuvo generally inconveniences paying customers when badly implemented, and Atlus games are certainly not exempt from it.
 

Cacher

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Jun 3, 2020
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Spring 2025.
They still haven't shown any menu. I guess it is going to be a relatively simplistic and shorter game compared with other big JRPGs. Not that I am complaining. It looks really good.
 

Paul

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Jan 26, 2019
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Man how I wish Methaphor didn't have Denuvo. I want to play it and I don't have a PS5 but Denuvo is a galaxy sized no-no :-/
"Controversial" opinion:

In principle, I am not a fan of DRMs as a concept. However: I do not mind Denuvo. I have over 50 games with it and do not remember experiencing any problems because of it. It is night and day compared to DRMs of old (Securom, Starforce, Safedisc). Maybe there were some bad implementations of Denuvo (I remember some grumbling about RE8), but overall, I can't really tell if a game has it or not.
Moreover, Denuvo actually works. In (lot more) cases than not, it stops day 1 piracy. It puts PC gaming on same footing as consoles (where piracy is impossible), and allows us to see actual sales of games and interest by paying customers.
Third point, recently there was a study that iirc showed that piracy can result in about 20% of lost revenue if possible on first week. That is a lot of money. Imagine investing tens of millions of euros into a project. Why wouldn't you want only paying customers to use it?

HOWEVER

I do think that from long-term and game preservation perspective, Denuvo should always be eventually removed. It can be a month after launch, or three months, or year, but developers and publishers should remove it once sales slow down (or the moment a crack appears), always and without exception. And provide GOG release.
 
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Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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I always love when companies take serious franchises and then press wacky button to make MP game so they can sell wacky costumes and MTX.
If you consider Control to be a "serious" franchise, then I don't know what to tell you. Of course it went for a slight horror focus initially to suck you in, but there's some super silly and whacky shit in the game, and by the end you are so overpowerd that there is nothing possibly scary in that game any more.

The trailer presents it in a way to appeal to Fortnite and hero shooter fans, I suppose, but I have no doubt it have that typical Remedy feel too. I hope it's a big success, so Remedy can spend all that money on a Control 2 and Alan Wake 3.
 

Gintaro

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Feb 20, 2021
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Spent some time with the Tribe Nine demo.

Overall I would say I like the game and I look forward to the full release. ( Cause bias of Kodaka too)

Story wise it's pretty much danganronpa-esque with all the death games. Its a very big deviation from the anime so I'm kinda confused initially. (Not sure is it changed midway of the game development). But still cool to see callbacks to the anime and casts returning.

Gameplay wise its fine. Combat is kinda janky initially but once you get used of the system it will flow a lot better. Team composition and tension cards composition is very important though. The bosses are pretty challenging too. The XB parts seems to play similarly to the usual trial of Danganronpa instead of baseball. But I'm a sucker for that so I enjoy it a lot.

The gacha part is the one that I have most complaints with. The rate seems to be very low and even the the free gems they gave for the demo its still hard to actually get the rarer characters.

It really dont feel like a gacha game with how linear is the story going. I guess with all the tribes theres a lot characters can be released so thats why they are making it a gacha? Other than that, I really dont see how they can fit in like events and side stories like usual gachas tho.

Definitely I'll be playing it on full release but hopefully the gacha rates can be improved and combat can be improved smoother too.
 
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Madventure

The Angel of Deaf
Nov 17, 2018
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Alright before I spend 40 years googling it all, does anyone happen to know what all DLCs/Expansion packs are worth actually buying for the Assassins Creed games?

I currently own all of the games and I thought I had gone and did this already but apparently and seeing people talk about AC I realized I was missing stuff.

I have all of the AC Valhalla stuff so that's easy

Also by content I basically mean like Story or etc not like time trial? or just a armored pony, if no one has any idea Ill figure it out later but I thought I might ask since someone might already know
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
Nov 12, 2018
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I put 8 hours into Heaven's Burn Red in 2 days. Send help.

Honestly the gameplay is pretty boring, but I am sticking with it for the writing although the manzai routine is getting stale. I hope the drama starts asap.
I'm guessing you're playing it in Japanese?
I'll give it a try when it comes out in english, which is supposedly pretty soon I think.
(They have a pre-registration page already, but it's been going really slow.)
 
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Cacher

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Jun 3, 2020
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Finished Chapter 1 of Heaven's Burn Red. The reveal at the end... damn. It got me good.

Going to rest for a few days to avoid burn-out before starting the first event story.
I'm guessing you're playing it in Japanese?
I'll give it a try when it comes out in english, which is supposedly pretty soon I think.
(They have a pre-registration page already, but it's been going really slow.)
Yeah, the Japanese / Chinese / Korean version is on steam. App store says it is launching on Nov 15th so the release is around the corner. I hope the launch will go well.

I definitely recommend it for the good writing and story. Dialogues are really fun to read.
 
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Arc

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Sep 19, 2020
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I think I'm nearing the home stretch in Metaphor. It does feel like it's going to be quite a bit shorter than Persona 5 as I'm "only" at 57 hours (including demo playtime). I'm guessing I have 10-20 hours left.

Loving it, but man it is a coin flip between it and FF7 Rebirth for GOTY.

I’m pretty sure Valve is doing an anniversary update for Half Life 2 like they did for Half Life 1 last year.
Yeah I'm expecting that plus a giveaway (and hopefully another documentary).

You will get some Deadlock skins and you will like it.
I know it's Tyler McViker, but his latest video mentioned Valve hiring devs from Rockstar, Naughty Dog, id and so on and I don't know if they would be happy working on skins.
 
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