@Yousef- (continued from backlog thread…) As far as the recommendation for a good first musou, you reminded me there that I forgot to mention that I do indeed have a functional PS Vita, and I even still use it from time to time. Every 3-4 months I turn it on when I get a hankering for portable gaming, but I don’t use it as much lately. The last thing I’ve been playing on it is the MGS remastered ports (from BluePoint! to bring things around full circle) but I haven’t even played that for a month or so. Since I got a PS Portal I have done my portable gaming on that.
Anyway, the point is — if there’s a good Musou experience on Vita then I could be open to that also. One issue might be that physical Vita games over here are extremely rare and even the second-hand stores don’t carry them anymore. But just mentioning that it’s an option. Sorry I forgot to mention that earlier. Hopefully that doesn’t completely change your extensive Musou treatise that you’re putting together, no doubt entitled: “A Scholastic and Empiric Analysis of the Optimal Musou Game to Start with for Novices to the Genre.” 😂
Mass Effect is a series that most people feel holds up, and is probably one of the most influential WRPGs ever made. When the community here ranked PS3 games, ME2 landed at #6, which is incredibly impressive. ME3 fared worse at #80, but still respectable to be in the top 100 for a stacked generation like that.
So although it might be difficult to manufacture interest in the Sci Fi setting, if you can get past that you’ll find a really satisfying journey. Few games have made me as attached to my own in-game avatar as I was with my original Shepherd. And also, there are few games series (…actually none that I can think of except for Telltale’s The Walking Dead series…?) that have a continuity connection with your save file carrying over into the new game to this extent. And I suspect we likely won’t ever see closely linked games like this anymore where your choices affect subsequent events and encounters in the sequel games because that limits the potential audience of the sequels. Since game take 5+ years to make, and are so susceptible to commercial failure as a result, I just don’t think producers will greenlight large projects that depend upon a save transfer from the previous game.
Being a ‘PlayStation only’ gamer, I didn’t have an Xbox and so I didn’t have access to ME1 and so I started at ME2 on PS3. It did a fair job of doing the introduction for players, where during the opening recap montage of ME1 you were able to choose from the few binary story points that would carry over and affect the ME2 storyline. It was fine, but definitely not as good as playing ME1 and making those choices organically within the game. I eventually played ME1 by way of the Legendary Edition so I have experienced the whole trilogy now. (More on that later.)
Nevertheless, I found ME2 to be a fantastic ride and then really enjoyed ME3 as well. The real joy is not only in building and recruiting your team and molding your Shepherd, but also making romantic connections and friendships, all the while trying to save the universe. So if you enjoy the relationship aspects of RPGs like Persona then you’ll find a lot to like here.
The third person shooting gameplay is fine; it isn’t necessarily best in class and it does seem to get better as the series progresses, but when I played ME1 just two years ago I felt like it was still fun.
Story-wise, there’s a lot to like, if you can sift through the Sci Fi lore. Your mileage will vary there, but I feel like you don’t need to be Sci Fi geek to like the story, as it has plenty of individual and human elements to distract from the backdrop and the core interactions are interesting in their own right.
The small choices you make tend to affect relationships, but the large choices you make affect plot (and sometimes relationships). But as I mentioned, the large choices tend to be just binary and aren’t overly complex (for example ‘save this person or kill this person’) but there are enough of them that you do feel like you are altering the plot somewhat. Nevertheless, as it seems you’ve heard, there’s some controversy on the series’s ending in this regard. Personally, I was happy with how it all went down and consider this game enjoyable more for the ride rather than the destination, if you catch my drift. Also, some DLC for ME3 really helped make the ending supposedly much, much more satisfying and so I need to go back and play that.
As for the option of playing the games in their OG format versus playing the remastered Legendary Edition, I don’t think there’s any downside to just skipping the OG games and only experiencing it through the LE. The LE has all the DLC already included, which is fairly substantial, and it does have updated graphics and I think some improved control features too, especially for ME1. Like I say, I didn’t play ME1 except only through the LE, but people said that it benefitted the most from the remaster.
I played part of ME1 LE on PS4 and part on PS5 after I got one and it definitely performed better on PS5 with better frame rate (60 fps I think) and much better load times. Just overall the package for LE is really well done and there’s nice added things like a separate trophy list for the series as well as the trophy list for each individual game, and it has the singular launcher and feels more like one game with three separate chapters.
I don’t recall if there’s added options for character creation, but I don’t think so. The changes are mostly in vehicle handling, some of the shooting mechanics, and visual upgrade in lighting, textures, etc, and the frame rate like I mentioned if you’re playing on current gen.
So overall — I would strongly recommend you play the series, and play it through the very well done remastered Legendary Edition. It’s peak BioWare and an absolute master class in RPGs. It’s a game series you can play through once and be satisfied, or one that you might feel the need to replay every year so you can try different options. In fact, talking about it has me motivated to pick back up with my FemShep run that I started with ME1 two years ago. I want to follow her and the renegade playthrough I started, and experience the ME2 and ME3 DLC that I missed out on when I played back on PS3.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
The recent announcement of The Old Country has stirred interest and I was wondering if I should consider making a go at the Mafia series. I’ve toyed with the thought before, but never seriously.
Through the recent discussions about GTA, my apathy toward the organized crime and urban setting is well documented, so I’ve never had any genuine interest in the Mafia games. But with the announcement of this new upcoming installment there was a lot of positivity about the series rumbling about. So it makes me reconsider if I’m missing out on something.
Barrier to entry is low for me, since: 1) I have all 3 Mafia games in my library already through PS+, and 2) HLTB indicates that these games (especially the first two) are actually quite short, by modern standards anyway. So it’s not like I would need to make any large financial or time investment. There’s a dearth of games in that 15-20 hour playtime sweet-spot, so that automatically moves the games up my backlog list.
But then I went back to scan the old review of Maria 1 and it somewhat dissuaded me. I’m getting conflicting messages about the games. Some comments have been very reverential, speaking of the games like they are timeless classics, and yet there’s discourse out there about the games being janky, messy, buggy, and stale. Furthermore, opinions on which of the three is the best are all over the shop. Especially the second and third games seem to have a wide variance of critique. If I did play them I’d almost certainly just start with the first.
Anyway, does anyone feel strongly either way? I’m happy to entertain any nudges directing me one way or the other.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution the original Mafia is great and the remaster was done expertly. Great story and characters, looks beautiful, plays pretty well and gives a lovely rendition of the period. I’d definitely recommend that you try that and then depending on your mileage… maybe try the others too.
Mafia 3 would be an all time great, if Hangar 13 could design side quests better, or just up the overall quality of everything by 20%/cut out the busywork.
It's still really memorable for me though, and the soundtrack made me appreciate 60's music.
Weirdly, I played the Mafia 1 remake a few years ago, but nothing is sticking with me from that, and I don't know if I completed it or where I got up to :S
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@colonelkilgore Thanks, colonel. I do think I’ll add it to the list. Most reviews and comments do seem positive about the first game and its remake/remaster. Push gave it a 7/10, which is a reasonable incentive when the game only asks for 15 hrs of my time. The second game’s remaster reviewed at 4/10 and I saw lots of negativity about it, but also many people saying it’s one of the top games of all time… so it’s a little confusing.
Would you consider the game(s) to be “GTA-lite”?
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Ravix Mafia 3 is the one I’m probably most interested in, thematically. If I’m not mistaken it’s 60’s and steeped in the tumultuous race relations at the time. Unfortunately it’s also the largest time investment, so I figured the first game would be a better trial of the series, but I don’t know.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution play both for an hour (in fact, adjust this to 10 or 15 mins) see if any lure you in. If not, you've not invested much time and can either pass, or try at a later date in the same way.
@Th3solution2 isn’t that bad really… I think that score came more from the fact that 1 was remade from the ground up, while 2 was barely a remaster. Still a decent game for sure.
As far as Mafia being GTA-lite… yes and no. I’d probably say the easiest description would be a linear GTA with a period setting. As while they have an open-world, there’s not a great deal to do apart from the main story. With GTA you can find your own fun for large parts of your playthrough if you’re not interested in moving forwards with the story.
@Ravix yeah I’m yet to play 3 but have heard it’s not a half bad game and probably better than the media reviews at its release. I will play it eventually… not gonna lie, I’m a little put off by how glitchy its trophies are. It has to be in the top three trophy lists since 2008.
@Yousef- okay, so where I was going with my comparison to sol, who remember is a lay person in regards to these series’… is that you can compare them (ie they have similarities) as they are both crime games based in an open world. Now obviously they’re both gonna bring their own things to the table after that fact (sim-like driving controls etc.) but if you honestly think two open-world crime games are nothing alike I don’t know what to tell you 🤣.
@colonelkilgore The reviews and comments for M2 Definitive Ed do seem to revolve around the poor remaster job, rather than the game itself. But apparently it was really poor on launch. Glitches galore. From what I can tell, they patched it once and that fixed a few things (like the Take 2 logo getting stuck on screen for the whole game 😂, to the point of covering up important HUD elements) but it doesn’t look like a lot of the smaller issues were ever addressed.
@Yousef- Thanks for the info. The driving mechanics were mentioned as a problem on several reviews I saw. I don’t mind a manual transmission style gear shifting and stiff steering for the purpose of authenticity, but I can see why it might be a complaint.
As for the shooting, the videos of gameplay look reminiscent of Uncharted cover shooting, which I don’t mind. And the story seems to have mixed reviews, understandably.
It’s just confusing when the site gives the three games 7/10, 4/10, and 6/10 scores (and I know scores aren’t the whole story on game assessment) and then the article by Sammy about the new entry announcement starts off with: “The Mafia games are fantastic …” and the comments are filled with superlatives about the series and remarks about them being people’s favorite games of all-time.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution that’s a shame, as it is a game that I’d like to revisit at some point. Oh well maybe they’ll get their **** together and properly patch the 2 and 3 remasters as the hype builds for the new game’s release.
@Th3solution
I enjoyed all of the Mafia games and recently completed the remaster of 1, not really interested in replaying the remaster of Mafia2 although I did enjoy it on PS3.
I know people seem to really dislike Mafia 3 but I really enjoyed it, I liked the time period and the music, which is a bit part of an open world for me was great.
However the ineptitude of Hanger 13 when it comes to fixing broken trophies really soiled the experience, I know it shouldn't matter but for me it did. The game released broken, was fixed and then broken again for the definitive (aka broken) edition, so you can't even use an unpatched physical edition. There is a thread on psnprofiles which is pages and pages long and some people have even developed tools to be able to install particular patches thus "fixing" the issue, one person even said that they made a front end for the tools because of Mafia3.
I still intend to replay Mafia 3 at some point as I enjoyed the world that much.
Rant over.
@CaptD yeah from what I recall (having read through pages and pages of it a few years back) you need to take the version back to 1.08 (I could be wrong on the specific version number) and then do every specific trophy that tracks a volume of actions (kills, missions for a specific mob boss etc.) during one sitting… otherwise the tracking resets 😩. The problem is that some of those trophies require a single session in the region of 30 hours and the game has a nasty habit of crashing… a lot (which obviously then resets the trophy tracking) 😫.
So annoying as, like you say it should’nt matter… but try telling that to my trophy completion rate 😅.
@Yousef- definitely a miscommunication if someone is saying that Mafia is the most non-GTA game ever… and somehow that statement doesn’t mean that they have zero similarities. It’s all good though bud, I’m over it… been over it tbh.
@Yousef- honestly these is no need to apologise and I think I get what your saying. Shame you didn’t like Mafia but can see where you’re coming from. I liked it a lot but… I think part of that was it being the right sorta game at the right time for me. Having said that… GTA is in a whole nutha stratosphere in terms of an all-around package.
@Th3solution
Bit late to the party but I would recommend 3 as well, I remember enjoying it when playing through a few years back. And as @Ravix already mentioned the soundtrack is great (in places), driving around town and the car radio playing CCR and such definitely made my day. It fairly standalone story I believe and set amongst the political turmoil and societal upheaval at the end of the 60s. I think I might have played the first two a long long time ago but don't really remember much about them tbh.
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@sorteddan Thanks for your insight. I do think I’ll like M3. And I reckon I’ll like all of them, but I’ll have to see if I want to prioritize the games over the rest of my pile of shame.
@Yousef-@colonelkilgore That’s an interesting thought experiment… I’d probably say the most non-GTA game ever might be… Puyo Puyo Tetris? Maybe Barbie: Pet Rescue? Nah, maybe Super Stardust. 😜 It all really depends on how you look at it! 😄
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
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