When will people learn? ALWAYS buy Bethesda releases on PC because Bethesda is an awful company that has zero quality control, has no idea how to optimize a game and requires fans to do it all for them.
90% chance they won't "hastily" do anything and the release of Last Story to the US was planned months ago.
Except no, it doesn't. It doesn't have sprites on an overworld, it doesn't have turn-based battles and while it has portraits, the models are also moving as well. And the voice acting is definitely not "horrendous." It contains many voice actors that you have undoubtedly praised time and time again before and the only reason you're calling it bad now is because "it's anime" or something. You played SO4. THAT had horrendous voice acting from more than a few characters, but mostly Sarah.
And "wallpaper backgrounds" being a negative is just completely mindboggling. Really? We're going to diss prerendered backgrounds when they contain more detail than really any 3D environment ever could? We're going to just say that great artwork is now a negative for a game? You might as well stop now.
The Sazh episode certainly doesn't seem expensive. While it says 600 yen ($8), I would assume it'll be exactly the same 400 MS points over here and the US PSN price will probably be pushed down to $6 or whatever. Seems fine by me.
Uh, no. It doesn't.
I've never really understood the problem with carrying portable games with you. I mean, if I'm just going out to some random place, I'll only bring it with me if I know there's a lot of downtime and even then, what's happening changes what I'm playing. If I'm by myself, then I'll stick to a singular single player game. If there's someone else with me and we can play together, I'll ask beforehand what to bring and we'll just play that. If I'm going to their house, I'll just bring with a little sandwich baggy with all of my games in it so we have access to everything. I don't really see why this is so difficult for so many.
Other than that, it'll always be retail. Yeah yeah digital discount but A. I like having physical copies of things, B. I can get more discounts and use gift cards and coupons that more than make up for that digital discount and C. retail copies drop in price anyway. The digital ones won't drop in lockstep.
I both do and don't find western RPGs appealing so I think I actually work better than most here.
1. Fetch questing being taken too seriously - You're walking around this big world when a wizard pops out! He says there's something of grave misfortune happening over in this volcano here! You must venture there and get INSERT ITEM and bring it back to him or to this other place! But really it's just a fetch quest with a fancy name and on completion, has no bearing on the actual main story of the game or on anything else. No character growth involved, no world growth involved, the player just gets shown some stuff.
2. Follow the arrow! When it comes right down to it, there's almost no point to having all of these big worlds. The vast majority of people seem to just follow the quest arrow straight to their objective and the developers just sprinkle the extra stuff in along whatever line the player is most likely to take. Fallout New Vegas kind of exemplifies that when something like 80% of its side quests are just along the walking paths of the main quest.
3. No actual character growth, I am the character! I find this extremely boring. None of what I would actually choose is ever represented in any of these games and because I'm supposed to be the character, there's never any time given for personal retrospection or any form of character growth whatsoever. The journey of the hero is met with many trials and so on, but you'd never know it because it's all just KEEP GOING YOU'RE AWESOME BECAUSE YOU'RE YOU. I want to get to know people and even the games held in highest regard on that (Mass Effect I guess) do a very poor job. Having one note conversations dealing with a specific characteristic of that character and then going on one quest that is basically always "meet guy from past, kill or neutralize" just doesn't cut it.
4. Main quest is usually really generic. The world is the story! Again, this becomes disappointing. Time and time again, you're just told about how big the world is and the villain of the game just boils down to some generic evil thing. For all of Dragon Age's talk of political this and that, none of it mattered because you knew that Loghain was an ass and it didn't matter because the Blight creatures were always the actual enemy and it's not like they have any form of characterization. Oh boy, an evil dragon! It's sure interesting! Nope.
5. Lore that means nothing. In Bioware games, you're given all these datalog entries on the history of Ferelden or space or whichever game you're in but what does it actually add to the game? It all just goes in one ear and out the other because none of it actually matters to the player. None of it factors in. No one's ever going to ask you about such and such point in history and no quest will ever involve the history of two warring knight families that your datalog could have informed you about so that you'd know more. Any relevant information is given directly to the player in about five seconds at the start, in the middle and at the end of the quest so the world the player walks through instead feels lifeless. It basically was in a permanent state until the player showed up because you're the only one that can actually change things and make decisions.
I could probably go on but I'll stop. But I'll also say that The Witcher 2 does all of that right. When you're given something for a fetch quest or other side quest, they typically improve the standings of the area. When you hunt all the harpies out of the quarry, they don't exist anymore. You've removed the threat and that's a permanent change to that game world. When Geralt gets a quest and he doesn't know exactly where the thing is, no quest arrow is given. He's not told GO DIRECTLY HERE, he has to find the location, which makes actual exploration a necessity. The characters are pre-created and have personalities and relationships beyond the player's input, allowing for actual emotional involvement with who they are. Side characters aren't just people you tell answers to and reply to. They're characters with motivations and plots of their own. The main quest still comes across as a little generic but at the same, it directly utilizes the history of that game world and helps the player. Books you find can tell you of ancient things that once happened and in more than a few situations, you can find different answers to quests that have to do with that history. Battles can be cut short by talk if you know their relationships and what they're trying to do.
Nope, it's pretty much all in your court. It was never a flaw as having to read a couple of lines simply can't be taken that way unless you're an ADD addled braindead manchild.
No, the load times are very clearly better. The PS2 version had some very long load times and problems with framerate at certain points. Both parts are fixed in this release as it's not loading off the disc anymore.
I just think people need to take what they can get with this. It's a new game to the system, adds some very nice refinements to a very very large game (it's already something like 90 hours long even without maxing out) and what some people are asking for (voicing the parts that weren't voiced) would be next to impossible.
Also Graces F has something like an extra 20 hours of gameplay. It for sure has an entire new part of the story.
Offering the game for $40 IS a price cut though. It's also taking up a large 3DS card if I remember correctly.
Hope you don't complain when Namco decides to not bring anything else from the series over to any portable because they cite people like you who like the series but won't support it.
It was never considered a flaw. Having to read a little bit is not a flaw. Unless you like the word flaw. Apparently this generation is so obsessed with using the word that they'll call anything a "flaw" Flaw flaw flaw flaw flaw. Are you done yet?
Not voicing the skits is not a negative point. It never was and it never will be.
I don't think price has anything to do with it. If anything it's a great price for a game that became rare. It was $50 when it came out, had worse load times, didn't have 3D and wasn't portable. And then it went up in price due to general rarity. Now you get it for $40, the convenience of portability, it has better load times and 3D.
There's literally zero to complain about here. We're lucky to even have the series in the US still.
Why are we complaining about it being the same as it was before? Did you expect them to go back, get the entire voice cast again, and just redo the skits? On a port? Just be grateful that we have the goddamn series in the US still at all, good lord.
Rainy. He's over in the watery area. You can see him pretty easily from far away.
I don't think that means he's "lost" anything and that's kind of ridiculous. It fits right with how he believes that it's ridiculous that he has to assign a score to what he says at all, but that it has to be done to appease certain people, as well as how things change.
It's more like they're talking about how the game hasn't really moved from the PS1 games. It's not even a particularly negative review when they go on to talk about how the main part of the game people are buying it for is good and that the people who enjoyed the old games will get along with it. People are just too quick to jump to conclusions and get all butthurt that metacritic stupidly multiplies out a score that it shouldn't.
It's just sad that people need scores at all. The ridiculous obsession with having some person reaffirm whether or not you should like something is just stupid. There is a clear problem within the gaming fanbase and how it deals with reviews. Just look at the responses to the new Uncharted or even Uncharted 3's reviews.
No. It does not. You cannot multiply out scores.
This is also a really good watch and is still fully relevant.
In case Kotaku doesn't like embedding two youtube videos.
You're going to give Adam Sessler a heart attack for changing a G4 score from a 3/5 to a 6/10. It doesn't work that way.
