Community MetaSteam | March 2020 - Rise and Shine, Ms. Vance, Until It Is Done!

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Cordelia

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OT but the Bravely Default II demo on Switch nearly soured me on the whole JRPG genre for some months. It's that bad.
They have work. Much, much work to do on this little piece of shit.

And having not played the BD series until now but having tried unsuccessfully to play Four Heroes of Light recently, I'm not hopeful. I mean there is a lot of room for improvement but at the core I can see that me and the lead creatives have a very different definition of good old JRPG.
I find the demo pretty good, but quite hard. I played Bravely Default on 3DS and II is straight up improvement.
 
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AHA-Lambda

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I tried the PS4 demo of Disaster Report 4 last night.
It was odd, and I still really have no idea what this game is supposed to be.

I just wandered around aimlessly until a few cutscenes with dialogue options with NPCs happened (you have lots of dialogue options that range to mustache twirling level evil but no idea how they affect things) and then it ended :face-without-mouth:
 
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lashman

lashman

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Voxelgram got patched and added some new things, but i don't understand the new stuff. Like what are the dots on some voxels?
With these update come 3 smaller changes:
  • Row Highlight - highlighting a voxel will now also highlight each row its on. This can be disabled in options.
  • Hint Indicators - hints with gaps will be marked with dots in each corner to prevent mistakes.
  • Size Hints - size text in lower right corner has been replaced with a cube that will rotate with camera.
;)
 
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sprinkles

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The first game I played on my newly bought PS3 back in 2013 was Gestalt. Still one of my favorite gaming moments ever. I am actually exited to replay Nier with the Replicant version.
The best characters remain unchanged after all (Kaine, Weiss)!!
 
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Cordelia

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Can't wait to see Melia suffer again and can't wait to feel depressed on Nier route B.
 

sprinkles

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I just got a little teary eyed remembering the cruel fate of some of Nier's characters. Replaying and knowing what will happen to them will be hard King of Facade and his wife, the two brothers...
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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I find the demo pretty good, but quite hard. I played Bravely Default on 3DS and II is straight up improvement.
Well to expand a little on my take...

Minor
Encountered a minor shadow bug. Texture streaming seems to be an issue too for the first second or so when your get out of town.
They still have polish to put in the UI department, some QOL details in the combat menus are lacking imho.
Controller tends to double click, that's maybe more of a Nintendo quality issue but at the same time I haven't noticed this elsewhere.

More annoying
Graphically it's relatively hideous. The town is blurry and the characters are pixelated to hell and back.
The writing is wooden. General plot is classical as can be, it's a choice I don't like but to each his own. But in the name of everything that is beautiful in the world, can party dialogs be a little bit worked on ? I mean, at this point it's some automatic writing level of bad.
Debatable camera distance, I often felt like it was too close.
Calling that a little adventure exclusive to the demo is pushing it. It felt like a part of the game, not something separate. It also felt like the game is very much still being tinkered, an embryo of a game (not the most elegant analogy, granted)

Please kill it with fire
JRPG dev haven't solved the battle frequency issue. Cool, I can see the monsters on the map ! Wait, they are remote controlled missiles :fearful-face:
Generally super hard, which only pushed me to grind. It wasn't an adventure as much as a multiple hour grind session. And when you think things can't be worse, you meet the boss.

Just my 2 cents, evidently, I'm not dismissing the validity of your positive experience.
 

Cordelia

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Well to expand a little on my take...

Minor
Encountered a minor shadow bug. Texture streaming seems to be an issue too for the first second or so when your get out of town.
They still have polish to put in the UI department, some QOL details in the combat menus are lacking imho.
Controller tends to double click, that's maybe more of a Nintendo quality issue but at the same time I haven't noticed this elsewhere.

More annoying
Graphically it's relatively hideous. The town is blurry and the characters are pixelated to hell and back.
The writing is wooden. General plot is classical as can be, it's a choice I don't like but to each his own. But in the name of everything that is beautiful in the world, can party dialogs be a little bit worked on ? I mean, at this point it's some automatic writing level of bad.
Debatable camera distance, I often felt like it was too close.
Calling that a little adventure exclusive to the demo is pushing it. It felt like a part of the game, not something separate. It also felt like the game is very much still being tinkered, an embryo of a game (not the most elegant analogy, granted)

Please kill it with fire
JRPG dev haven't solved the battle frequency issue. Cool, I can see the monsters on the map ! Wait, they are remote controlled missiles :fearful-face:
Generally super hard, which only pushed me to grind. It wasn't an adventure as much as a multiple hour grind session. And when you think things can't be worse, you meet the boss.

Just my 2 cents, evidently, I'm not dismissing the validity of your positive experience.
Hmm have you played Octopath Traveller?
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
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Hmm have you played Octopath Traveller?
No, I don't know why because the game interests me and I have it in my backlog. Considering my experience with the BDII demo and Four Heroes of Light before, I'm a little wary now, yeah.

OT but I'm looking at AC-like chillax experiences and there are options. I wouldn't say many jump at me but there are definitely several. I'm eyeing Pokemon Sword, then there are a lot of farming/life sims on PC. And evidently the Sims.
This because, while I appreciate AC for what it offers me these days, I can't say I was that occupied today on my island. I will hop back later to chill some more and try to find little things to do, but it felt like a Sunday... the simulation is deep :pleasedblob:

Oh, and hurry the fuck up on the museum, Tom ! I have a backlog of fossils, ffs.
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
Nov 12, 2018
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[/QUOTE]
Xenoblade Chronicles is kinda overrated tho
Fuck yeah Nier.


To be honest they would have to pretty fundamentally change that for me to be interested. What I played of the original on Wii (well, Dolphin) was such a slog. I even gave it 2 tries of ~20 hours total.
It took me 3 or 4 tries to get through and it probably wasn't worth it in the end.
The game is beautiful, the world is amazing and the story and characters very interesting and it has a killer soundtrack, but "slog" is a good way to describe it. It's far too long and filled to the brim with shit MMO-tier fetch quests. The combat is also offline MMO tier where you set up you party and abilities and then constantly cycle through the same combos. The only change of pace is playing as a different character.
 

Cordelia

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No, I don't know why because the game interests me and I have it in my backlog. Considering my experience with the BDII demo and Four Heroes of Light before, I'm a little wary now, yeah.

OT but I'm looking at AC-like chillax experiences and there are options. I wouldn't say many jump at me but there are definitely several. I'm eyeing Pokemon Sword, then there are a lot of farming/life sims on PC. And evidently the Sims.
This because, while I appreciate AC for what it offers me these days, I can't say I was that occupied today on my island. I will hop back later to chill some more and try to find little things to do, but it felt like a Sunday... the simulation is deep :pleasedblob:

Oh, and hurry the fuck up on the museum, Tom ! I have a backlog of fossils, ffs.
Yeah all your complaints to BDII also exist in Octopath Traveler so avoid that game.

I really want to play AC but it's hella expensive due to corona :suicide-blob:
 

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
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The game is beautiful, the world is amazing and the story and characters very interesting and it has a killer soundtrack, but "slog" is a good way to describe it. It's far too long and filled to the brim with shit MMO-tier fetch quests. The combat is also offline MMO tier where you set up you party and abilities and then constantly cycle through the same combos. The only change of pace is playing as a different character.
Yeah, that was my exact issue with it.
 
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Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
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The game is beautiful, the world is amazing and the story and characters very interesting and it has a killer soundtrack, but "slog" is a good way to describe it. It's far too long and filled to the brim with shit MMO-tier fetch quests. The combat is also offline MMO tier where you set up you party and abilities and then constantly cycle through the same combos. The only change of pace is playing as a different character.
Yeah, I tried to play it for the first time in emulation a few years back (and lost my save, dammit) and it wasn't a particularly interesting experience. And as I'm dumb as a brick, I will maybe try it again with the new version.
Boring, filled with filler content, and yeah, combat is uninteresting.

I would go farther than you and say, very interesting story ? What story ? I was 30 or 40 hours in and there was barely a story there. The pace is glacial. Every few hours the game throws you a bone, a little cinematic hinting at some mecha plot... and gets immediately back to filler.

indeed :) good stuff :D
Ah, so it's the day where I look like a grumpy old man yelling at clouds ! I didn't find any way to deactivate these improvements and don't like them. My brain is already used to the old UI and while it's a very welcome addition for other players, I think it's just adding unnecessary clutter.
If there is a way, please tell me. And explain the point thing, even with the patch description, I don't understand it.

And then, please kindly get the fuck out of my lawn.

Yeah all your complaints to BDII also exist in Octopath Traveler so avoid that game.

I really want to play AC but it's hella expensive due to corona :suicide-blob:
Can't you get a cheap code on CDKeys ? Cheap being very relative, yeah. As I think you are living outside the EU/US that might not be possible, I'm not sure if they sell keys for your region.
 
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Swenhir

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Apr 18, 2019
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I finished Sekiro yesterday and I'm glad I didn't jump on the hype train sooner / when it was even more expensive, because despite finishing it and despite a lot of fun mixed in, overall I think it's a negative review from me. It's a gorgeous game with some fun fundamental combat but it's plagued by being incredibly full of itself being a very specific game and not allowing anything to pierce that structure.

On PC at least people can mod it so I would say with mods to customize the "difficulty" (I use that word loosely) it would be very approachable to more people and the game is very pretty and can be fun, and it's certainly novel, but I think everyone that would love the game straight up already knows that.

Going to try and finish up Alyx in the next couple of days, it's not perfect but so far very good.
That's been my problem with souls games ever since DS1 and it has only gone worse over time. I don't think I can bring myself to play another one if they keep on treating combat like a memory and execution challenge rather than let the player breathe and be creative.

It's an authoritarian, school-teacher way of approaching combat design that I find increasingly boring and distasteful. The fact that a vocal part of the fans always want the game to punish and hurt them more with each installment doesn't help and, truth be told, is quite disquieting

I just realized that there is another Nier game besides Automata. Is it any good?
I loathe Square Enix and dislike Platinum, I have to force these words through clenched teeth but it's a good game. It was a terrible pain mechanically but the plot at least for the first play-through was really good. It was way too tedious to be anything above that, but the world, the story and characters were truly something special at the time of release.

I couldn't bring myself to do repeat play-throughs, and I think the whole narrative structure of it is bullshit aiming at stretching the game's playtime.
 
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lashman

lashman

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Ah, so it's the day where I look like a grumpy old man yelling at clouds ! I didn't find any way to deactivate these improvements and don't like them. My brain is already used to the old UI and while it's a very welcome addition for other players, I think it's just adding unnecessary clutter.
If there is a way, please tell me. And explain the point thing, even with the patch description, I don't understand it.

And then, please kindly get the fuck out of my lawn.
 

Dragon1893

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Apr 17, 2019
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Fuck yeah Nier.


To be honest they would have to pretty fundamentally change that for me to be interested. What I played of the original on Wii (well, Dolphin) was such a slog. I even gave it 2 tries of ~20 hours total.
The game really drags its feet in the last third and the ending is ridiculous. It's a great game but not something I'd replay because of how unnecessarily long it is.
 

beep boop

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Dec 6, 2018
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Riffing on what others said about Xenoblade (1), the best thing about it to me was how it captured my imagination. The concept of being on this huge creature and the execution thereof through its scale, scope, sight lines and openness really spoke to me in a way very few games have. The story is pretty trite for large parts of it, the combat isn’t amazing either. But the world is such a cool place to just kind of “be in”. That was really appealing and allowed me to “round up” the overall experience, so to speak.

Breath of the Wild did a similar thing to me, but I enjoyed its theming and play more than XB. It would be nice if the combat was tuned a little differently in this remaster, but I don’t believe that will be the case.

I do think the game could’ve benefited from being in an action genre with more layers of world interactions rather than a JRPG, because its pacing issues and repetitiveness kind of compound with the amount of dead time there is just walking around or doing very samey battles.

In contrast, I think the auto battle system in FF12, despite being simpler, works better over the long run because it takes place in more compact spaces. So the time to “engaged interaction” is a lot shorter. Plus game speed modifiers. What a godsend. Every JRPG needs this and Bravely Default’s “just leave me alone” button.
 
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Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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SE hates PC confirmed
No, it's just that they have no clue how to manage their releases, they do a great support for every platform (except ONE) but they really make weird decisions such as not do day and date release for everyone or skip certain games on certain platforms for no good reason.

Still, their support is more or less stable.
 

Dragon1893

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Square doesn't hate PC, they're just weird as per usual.

Every Final Fantasy game on Steam! Except 1-2-Tactics for no apparent reason even though they have mobile versions.

I would scream. I'm still salty I sold off my PS3 before playing Drakengard 3
I still have my PS3 and I'm always tempted when it goes on sale but that frame-rate is just so bad.
 

Cordelia

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Can't you get a cheap code on CDKeys ? Cheap being very relative, yeah. As I think you are living outside the EU/US that might not be possible, I'm not sure if they sell keys for your region.
Well Switch is region agnostic and there are only three store region there, NA EU JP. I just checked cdkeys and there is Animal Crossing EU that's cheaper than USD. Hmmm now I'm interested.
Drakengard when?
Drakengard 3 with more than 10fps :blobdrool:
 

Deleted member 113

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I thought it would be super weird to play a game in Swedish, but I actually dig it in Generation Zero, guess it's simply when its dubbed that I hate it.
I started playing the game yesterday, after owning it since launch, and I have a bit of a love and hate relation with it. :p
The game looks lovely, and the soundtrack is very much 80's, "doing our best John Carpenter impression", so I find it appealing because of that.

But, the game is extremely unpolished, and buggy. Everything, from the movement of the character, to small texture issues in the screens where you change your look.
I have a very high tolerance for "jank", and buggy games, but after all these months I can't believe the number of bugs I experienced in just a couple of hours.
I mean, things like: suddenly my ammo turned to zero, and I couldn't shoot and died (I had 148 bullets, but they were suddenly gone from the ammo counter, and couldn't be equipped; I had to drop them to the ground, and pick them up again, in order for them to appear again); I got stuck in several objects, and had to fast travel elsewhere, in order to continue the game; and more.

Plus, unless things pick up significantly, the game is extremely empty, and with not much to do.
You go to a place, you search around everywhere for a note or an audio message that tells you to go to the next place. You go to the next place, search around for where to go next. And so far, it's been only that. Go to point A, and get message to go to point B. Go to point B, and get message to get to point C. Get to point C, and get message to go to point D. And so on.
So far, I haven't even seen an NPC.
 

Le Pertti

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I started playing the game yesterday, after owning it since launch, and I have a bit of a love and hate relation with it. :p
The game looks lovely, and the soundtrack is very much 80's, "doing our best John Carpenter impression", so I find it appealing because of that.

But, the game is extremely unpolished, and buggy. Everything, from the movement of the character, to small texture issues in the screens where you change your look.
I have a very high tolerance for "jank", and buggy games, but after all these months I can't believe the number of bugs I experienced in just a couple of hours.
I mean, things like: suddenly my ammo turned to zero, and I couldn't shoot and died (I had 148 bullets, but they were suddenly gone from the ammo counter, and couldn't be equipped; I had to drop them to the ground, and pick them up again, in order for them to appear again); I got stuck in several objects, and had to fast travel elsewhere, in order to continue the game; and more.

Plus, unless things pick up significantly, the game is extremely empty, and with not much to do.
You go to a place, you search around everywhere for a note or an audio message that tells you to go to the next place. You go to the next place, search around for where to go next. And so far, it's been only that. Go to point A, and get message to go to point B. Go to point B, and get message to get to point C. Get to point C, and get message to go to point D. And so on.
So far, I haven't even seen an NPC.
I agree with completely. It is empty and janky as hell. i think it's all there is to it, go to a place to get next waypoint. But still, I'm loving it.:D Because it has it charm and does some things really well. Like I'm loving that one has to shoot different parts of the robots. And it does Swedish village life so right, and growing up in a such place it does maybe make me look over many of it's flaws.
 

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I agree with completely. It is empty and janky as hell. i think it's all there is to it, go to a place to get next waypoint. But still, I'm loving it.:D Because it has it charm and does some things really well. Like I'm loving that one has to shoot different parts of the robots. And it does Swedish village life so right, and growing up in a such place it does maybe make me look over many of it's flaws.
Yeah, that's why I mention I have a love and hate relation with it. ;)
The game sure has a wonderful "ambience" to it, it looks lovely (frequently extremely impressive, from weather effects, lightning, ...), and the soundtrack fits perfectly.

But, despite the sense of emptiness being appealing, I find the gameplay loop very limited and unappealing.
Even the collectables are uneventful. It's great that you can check them and rotate them (I assume some of these flyers are real things?), but there's not much here of interest so far, and they don't help make the world a "richer" place, content-wise.

It kind of makes me wish someone would take this map and engine, and did a new game in it.
With characters, missions, some appealing secrets and collectables, anything.

I'm hoping things pick up a bit soon, even if it's just some different loot or something.
 

Swenhir

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Speaking of jank, I'm feeling a small interest for Elex. I had enjoyed Risen a fair bit, but have played none of the other games by the studios. It seems that they have been churning out sub-par games since that one, should I give it a try?
 

Joe Spangle

Playing....
Apr 17, 2019
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I really wish i had Index controllers for HL:A. Im finding the Vive ones awkward to hold for a prolonged period of play and i keep pressing buttons i dont mean to and find holding the triggers uncomfortable. Ive taken about a million screenshots because i keep hitting the two buttons at the same time.

Ive just got the grenades which are fun but a few times ive not been able to coordinate the buttons and end up dropping it at my feet and then having a mad scramble to pick it up and lob it.
 

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
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Speaking of jank, I'm feeling a small interest for Elex. I had enjoyed Risen a fair bit, but have played none of the other games by the studios. It seems that they have been churning out sub-par games since that one, should I give it a try?
I haven't played Elex yet, but from what I hear for fans of that type of game it's very good.

Generally, I know people who would strongly disagree with calling their other games "sub-par" ;). Personally I felt Risen 3 was pretty good.
It's just always important to go into these games with the right mindset, and realize that what you're seeing is a tiny (by AAA standards) developer trying to make what's basically one of the most budget-intensive genres imaginable, a deep open world RPG.
 
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