Patricia Hernandez's saved articles

This is why I think every open world game needs a photo mode. Artists spend thousands of hours building these amazing worlds and being able to stop and take pictures of them is amazing and really lets their work shine. I’ve spent hours in Horizon Zero Dawn taking pictures - being able to adjust the time of day and… Read more

Building is absolutely unnecessary to have fun or to do well... until you get to the last few people. If everyone else has a tower, building walls around them as protection and giving them an ever-improving vantage point, you running around in the open field are an easy target. Read more

Yeah, same here. It’s like a mental block, I can’t make myself figure out building while I’m focused on shooting and trying not to get shot. I watch skilled players get into battles where sprawling structures just unfold around them and I’m mystified. That said, I think it’s pretty easy to rank fairly highly,… Read more

I just started playing this week, but my only building strategy before I find myself in the top 10 is “locate where I’m being shot from and try to put a wall quickly between myself and the shooter, then run the fuck away” Read more

The only time I took first place happened because I hunkered down in a small building with 5 people left. The protected area just so happened to keep centered on my little shack (with no roof) and I sat terrified for minutes as I listened to gunfire and waited for someone to come in and wreck my shit. I felt like a… Read more

I only recently started building after watching some streams of Fortnite and it has made me a better player. I suggest mapping each building item separately with the wall and ramp mapped to convenient buttons (e.g. Q, F), and map a separate button to quick switch between “build” and your last used weapon. This helps a… Read more

Not building is actually a good idea until reaching #2, because as soon as you build you can be sure people start to notice you and that’s not a good thing. But to win that #1 on a consistent basis, as you are saying, it is pretty much needed. Read more

My big hurdle with the SMT series isn’t the difficulty, it’s that they all take place in Tokyo. Like the article said, it can be REALLY confusing. The games seem to expect you to have some knowledge of Tokyo or something. I can’t remember every location and every side street and the labyrinthine structure of the… Read more

I went through a very similar experience as you with discovering / loving the Persona games and buying this game on day one, but it crushed me. I probably spent 40+ hours making tiny bits of progress because I had to grind just to feel like I was standing a chance. I was so dumbfounded - I’ve been playing all kinds of… Read more

I, too, have been in this SMT timeline loop since 2013. I just restarted it for the third time, and I made it into Unclean Tokyo for the first time. Those bosses really take a toll. I’m on attempt number eight against Medusa, and I had to take a break to go fuse more Zan-based demons...
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Persona Q is great, but about as difficult as SMT IV and with big heaping helpful of extra, complicated mechanics. Tokyo Mirage Sessions is much more chill (despite the fact that I’m playing on Hard), and it’s got the added bonus of adorable animated J-pop videos. Strange Journey was very similar to SMT IV, but I… Read more

Patricia, from a lifelong SMT fan... Congratulations! The series is so rich and rewarding. It’s got a high level of entry (learning the systems, the SMT language for spells, and how different it is from most RPGs in regards to status effects) but the stories, world and feeling of accomplishment are absolutely worth… Read more

Man, this brings me back to one of my greatest gaming heartaches. Like you, I played P3 and instantly fell in love - there was no other game out there like it - and I got my hands on all of the other SMT games I could. Also like you, I just couldn’t get that far into most of them. The exception was Digital Devil Saga.… Read more

I adored Persona Q so much. Though I found it to be a bit easy once you understand how to murder everything with Naoto. But I’m really proud of you for finishing SMT 4, I struggled with it as well but on my 4th attempt and many years after purchasing the game I beat it. I enjoyed Apocalypse more for the focus on the… Read more

Exploiting mechanics is an interesting thing I have learned in my many years of playing games as well. Typically I’ll just go the brute force way as I tend to hate mana in whatever form it takes in games. It is usually way too easy to use up and way too expensive to get back (looking at you FFVI). A health potion… Read more

Ugh you’ve described my gaming habits to a T. I love starting games, and I’m terrible at finishing them. I have awful memory, so generally I’ll put 20-30 hours into a JRPG, get excited for a new one and start that one, and completely forget everything that happened so if I want to finish a game I have to start it over… Read more

Oh man, I got this game on its release date and still havent beat it. My situation is pretty similar to yours, and it makes me happy that you beat it - cuz it is the game I sink hours into, then put aside out of frustration (last time I played it - iirc - I basically just got lost trying to navigate to the correct… Read more

This was my exact experience with Final Fantasy 13.
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This might be the best Halo fan video I’ve seen since the original warthog launch. Not including Machinima series like RvB, feel like that’s a different category all together. Read more

Incredible amount of dedication by these guys. That ghost penta-jump was like a scene out of an action movie.
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