Ok, done the first one. That was pretty quick... probably 30ish hours of game time. My thoughts are, in a word, "charming". A really good old school JRPG. The characters are pretty standard JRPG fare, but other than maybe Olivier, they have enough actual personality that they're not cheesy. I certainly didn't actively dislike any of them, and (other than the two principals) because they come and go, they never have a chance to wear out their welcome. If anyone had the potential to be an obnoxious JRPG protagonist it's Estelle, but because of the sheer volume of dialogue in the game and its generally lighthearted tone, she usually just ends up being endearing. That extra writing in the English translation is pretty much what makes the game, I think. It doesn't have that "ESL" feel that every Final Fantasy game has. I read a review beforehand that suggested that it was too much - that the game takes a hundred words to say what could be said in ten - and that is simply not the case. If you're going to do a text-based RPG, this is the right way to write dialogue. I haven't ever seen a game do that aspect quite so well.
Story-wise,
Spoiler!
there's not a hell of a lot here. Most of the game is formulaic - go to a new area centered around a city, meet the people in charge of said area, discover that something seems to be rotten in the state of Denmark, add in a local temporary party member or two, solve the local mystery, oh hey what do you know it has something tangentially to do with the main plot, temporary party member leaves, move on to the next area, rinse, repeat.
The main plot was solid, the stakes were high without being apocalyptic, and the villain was actually not over-the-top at all. I thought Col. Richard's motivations made all the sense in the world, aside from the whole "I wouldn't have had to do this if only Cassius hadn't quit the army" piece. That was pretty silly. But Liberl being overrun ten years prior, having its bacon saved by a major technological leap that allowed it to repel its enemy, and then seeing that advantage quickly fade as other nations caught up and started using the same new technology... yeah, I get it. The writing's on the wall, your nation is about to be overtaken, and you want a nuclear deterrent. That makes perfect sense. It was almost sort of a cop-out that it turned out he was basically incepted to do all of it. I wished we'd spent more than just the last chapter with him as the bad guy, because it would have been nice by the end of the game to feel like you knew him. He really doesn't get much screen time - just a few cameos. That might be my biggest gripe.
The ending, which is really a teaser for SC (as the main conflict of the game was actually resolved), I'm undecided about. It sort of came out of left field. Turns out the real power behind the scenes who put the whole game in motion is a minor NPC who is basically a passive observer in a couple of minor quests, and even that character is really just a front, because he's actually a totally different person who has never been mentioned? Did I miss something, or was the name "Weissman" or the "Ourobouros" organization mentioned at any point in the game before that? That was a missed opportunity. It also felt like a bit of a rip-off that there was really no payoff to who Lorence was. I had a suspicion throughout that it was going to be Cassius himself, or maybe Cassius's illegitimate son, or something. I also thought there was a missed opportunity to have Joshua be the one who gave Richard the Gospel in the first place (under the influence of mind control, obviously). Anyway, some of these issues may simply be dealt with by playing the next chapters.
Ultimately, it felt like the whole game is less about the game's story and more about world-building, and that's fine. The music was good, nothing too outstanding, but did the job. Combat is solid, again, nothing blowing me away - it wasn't a situation where I was looking forward to getting into my next fight to try out a new skill or new weapon or a new spell, but it also wasn't exasperating (I think having visible on-screen encounters a la Chrono Trigger rather than FF-style random battles is helpful in that regard). I don't think I could really give it a score out of ten, because I don't think it's a stand-alone product. And that's fine, it doesn't claim to be, it's just the first chapter.
I did this, and I found that these quests were really pretty meaningless. There were a couple that were sort of interesting I guess, potentially important going forward, but the rest... well, helping decorate for the festival or finding books for a librarian doesn't seem like it'll have any payoff, frankly. Maybe you meant this to apply to SC or Third?
The thing is, the Trails series spans so many games (3 Trials in the Sky, 2 Trails of Azure, and 4 Trails of Cold Steel), they introduce A LOT of characters and plot points. It can get pretty overwhelming, especially with so many loose ends that get tied up in subsequent games only to introduce even more loose ends.
Overall, the store is pretty epic in that it spans multiple locations across the continent. The dialogue does get pretty cheesy (especially in Trials of Cold Steel, when they introduce the "high school is the greatest! everything after that is pretty much downhill" anime trope), so you get a lot of cheese. But as an anime fan, I'm pretty used to it.
It's one of the best sports games I've ever played - so much content, and so much to do in it.
I really wish that for NHL EA would adopt from them how you have the ability to import your Franchise Mode or Be a Pro mode from the previous game into the new game. It sucks having to start over every single year.
I play it in spurts so I'm really only able to get through one full season a year in franchise mode.
One thing I wish they would add in MLB though is being able to import rookies into your franchise mode even if that means replacing a fake prospect with them. I know you can edit players to make them into anyone you want but unless they changed it this year you cant import already made faces so you're stuck trying to recreate them and they never look as good as their actual in-game face.
I really wish that for NHL EA would adopt from them how you have the ability to import your Franchise Mode or Be a Pro mode from the previous game into the new game. It sucks having to start over every single year.
I play it in spurts so I'm really only able to get through one full season a year in franchise mode.
One thing I wish they would add in MLB though is being able to import rookies into your franchise mode even if that means replacing a fake prospect with them. I know you can edit players to make them into anyone you want but unless they changed it this year you cant import already made faces so you're stuck trying to recreate them and they never look as good as their actual in-game face.
I agree. That would be a great feature. I'm really glad that The Show has it. Happy for XBOX fans next year - they get to play some good baseball on their system as well!
I actually used to play MLB The Show, but only ever played RTTS (and made it super easy with sliders). I don't think I ever played an actual game in my life.
It's a whole new game when you're trying to work counts, sense patterns, manufacture runs as a team, instead of just crushing dingers to left field.
The thing is, the Trails series spans so many games (3 Trials in the Sky, 2 Trails of Azure, and 4 Trails of Cold Steel), they introduce A LOT of characters and plot points. It can get pretty overwhelming, especially with so many loose ends that get tied up in subsequent games only to introduce even more loose ends.
Yeah that's pretty much what I'm here for, even though I'm resigned to the inevitable reality that some of them are going to be less well executed than others. I'm like 10 hours into Trails SC, and I'm actually really liking the "evolution" voice acting, it's kind of like watching a subbed anime. The extent of the voice acting remains impressive, it's basically every interaction that has any plot importance plus all interactions with important NPCs.
Quote:
Overall, the store is pretty epic in that it spans multiple locations across the continent. The dialogue does get pretty cheesy (especially in Trials of Cold Steel, when they introduce the "high school is the greatest! everything after that is pretty much downhill" anime trope), so you get a lot of cheese. But as an anime fan, I'm pretty used to it.
Hm. I'm not finding the first game and a bit to be very cheesy, outside of Estelle, and even she isn't that terrible. Just cliche a lot of the time. As you say, kind of "anime cheesy", and even that is blunted by the lighthearted tone of the games so far. I've seen far, far worse in video games... hell, most FF writing is a lot cheesier than this, while taking itself far more seriously. But I suppose I will see in a few hundred game-hours when I get to the Cold Steel games.
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Yeah that's pretty much what I'm here for, even though I'm resigned to the inevitable reality that some of them are going to be less well executed than others. I'm like 10 hours into Trails SC, and I'm actually really liking the "evolution" voice acting, it's kind of like watching a subbed anime. The extent of the voice acting remains impressive, it's basically every interaction that has any plot importance plus all interactions with important NPCs.
Hm. I'm not finding the first game and a bit to be very cheesy, outside of Estelle, and even she isn't that terrible. Just cliche a lot of the time. As you say, kind of "anime cheesy", and even that is blunted by the lighthearted tone of the games so far. I've seen far, far worse in video games... hell, most FF writing is a lot cheesier than this, while taking itself far more seriously. But I suppose I will see in a few hundred game-hours when I get to the Cold Steel games.
Maybe it's Cold Steel that got to me, but I agree with with you with Sky, I thought the localization did a fantastic job for that game. I really like Estelle as a main character. Rean (the Cold Steel MC), I'm kind of on the fence on. Still can't wait for Cold Steel 4 to come out this fall to hopefully wrap up the story nicely.
Bah Ghost got pushed to 7/17. Nioh 2’s down to 39.99 in the PlayStation store at least that’ll keep me busy.
Nioh 2 will keep you busy for a long time. It's a massive game that will take you well over 70 hours if you complete side missions. I'm near the end but hit some issues in that the Tonfa while perfect for beating down enemies in the first 3/4 of the game are not powerful enough for the final bosses nor does it have the distance required when you are facine one hit deaths. Very difficult game. Fun but difficult and well worth $39.99 for the amount of gameplay it provides.
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I just downloaded the early release of Space Haven this morning from Steam for $25 bucks. I'm looking forward to a new game of building a ship, deciding on a role and terrorizing the galaxy.
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Epic is also having a sale and I got a $14 coupon somehow for any game over $20 (not sure if everyone gets one), so I tried out What the Golf which has a Katamari Damacy feel, fun so far.
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Epic is also having a sale and I got a $14 coupon somehow for any game over $20 (not sure if everyone gets one), so I tried out What the Golf which has a Katamari Damacy feel, fun so far.
I got the same coupon and it's reusable. I bought a few games that were already on sale for 50% off and saved a boatload.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Ah, I figured it out. It only applies if the game would be over $20 after the coupon is applied. It doesn't apply if the game is over $20 before the coupon is applied. That's why it didn't show up for me.
EDIT: Nevermind. It worked on a game that was $26 (ACO, which is worth 12 bucks I figure). So why won't it work on a game that's $20.69? Weird.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 05-21-2020 at 04:06 PM.
So I started playing Space Haven and I'd really recommend it. Its a lot of fun and pretty well done, though in the early realease there are features still to come.
The tutorial is nice. But there are two scenarios right now.
In the first one you and your crew of four start on a mining base, and you have to gather and harvest and start building your ship from the ground up.
The second scenario you have a really basic ship, like no engines or weapons or anything but a big old power plant, a shuttle and 2 mining pods. From there you start installing components around environmental controls, food and water production, creature comforts, engines navigation, weapons, sensors and a ton of other stuff.
There are a few ways to get the components from building materials to life giving things like water and medicine and guns.
You can mine asteroids
You can salvage dead ships (Or live ones depending on your roles
You can trade.
To go with that you can kind of design your ship around different roles
You can be military, which means you go around killing pirates and aliens. More about those bastards in a minute
You can be a pirate and shoot up ships and salvage the derelicts
You can be a miner
You can just be a trader. You don't even need to build a ship, you can just build a trading post. Lots of choices.
The learning curve is deep, everything from dealing with limited space and resources, and dropping the ball can be fatal. I build my ship and thought I had it under control, and had a pretty cool ship, but I jumped to another system and started salvaging wrecks and when I came back to the ship I was having power failures. I had run out of energy rods and didn't have the materials to make more so I thought I would jump to another system but my hyperdrive won't spin up.
I also got cocky and sent two crewmen to explore a derelict so I could decide if I wanted to salvage it. But I walked in and the ship was infested by aliens. These things were crab like, and fast and nasty, and they grabbed one of my guys and we tracked him back to a lair and they had basically webbed him to a wall to feed on him or breed with them, since there is a queen out there. We rescued him and got him back, and I realized I hadn't built a sick bay, so he died as I frantically tried to build one for him.
Its a cool game but if you get started you'll look up and 3 or 4 hours have passed as you've been trying to figure out how to jam all of these systems into your ship and why is it -36 in the crew quarters and +30 everywhere else.
Its a lot of fun, and I think its a great game for $25 bucks.
Oh and you can build a fricken fleet of ships as well.
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Epic is also having a sale and I got a $14 coupon somehow for any game over $20 (not sure if everyone gets one), so I tried out What the Golf which has a Katamari Damacy feel, fun so far.
I picked this up and it was fun for a while, but there isn't a lot of challenge and the gimmick gets old pretty fast. I'd say I got my $8 bucks worth but I'm glad I didn't pay full price.
You're welcome I'm restarting for about the 4th time because I've done at least one crucial mistake and been over aggressive in building my ship, so when it was time to build a engine, I was out of materials and couldn't build more because I'd strip mined the system.
But every time you start fresh, you get a little better at it.
Oh and Water, and Energy rods are king.
And when you build certain things be careful to read the description. The farms and the industrial stuff almost need to be in sealed room with environmental controls.
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