Thanks for a very thorough and detailed explanation, you’ve definitely ‘wetted my appetite’ for Bayonetta and Vanquish in particular. I’m gonna slot them in to my schedule in between some other genres once I’ve finally gotten around to finishing the older God of War series. I’m kinda hoping that the GoW games will ‘sharpen’ my skills a little as from what I’ve read the platinum journeys on the DMC series, Vanquish and Metal Gear Rising are very difficult. If I’m anything though, it’s persistent... so I’ll give them the old college try either way.
Edit. I’ve also picked up Dante’s Inferno which I’ve heard is pretty much a older GoW clone, so I’ll have to find time for that at some point too.
Also, I absolutely loved Nier: Automata! I kinda had withdrawals after finishing it as I struggled to find anything that could satiate my action gameplay needs after getting in that flow. Obviously the story, OST and just all around artistry was on a whole another level too... but that gameplay was so good. If these other games we have been discussing ‘scratch that Nier itch’ I’ll be a happy man. Of course, Nier: Replicant is also releasing next year, so hopefully although it’s being made by a completely different developer doesn’t mean that it will be too different in quality. Hopefully Taro is still directing.
@colonelkilgore Oh, I’d forgotten about Dante’s Inferno — yes, absolutely that one has to be the closest game to the older God of War games. Yup, pretty much considered a clone. Nevertheless the quality is high. The setting and [extremely loose] adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedy is a fascinating setting for a game, actually, and that’s one of the things that attracted me. I’d like to see more games based on classic literature. It’s worth a play for anyone who enjoys the older GoW games for the gameplay piece.
Absolutely agree on NieR Automata! It’s one of the few games that I still listen to some of the musical score just for kicks now and then. And the combat and movement is so smooth; I’ve often described the way 2B moves and fights as ‘balletic’ and it was a game that made it tough to play anything else after you finish it. It’s one of those that you just sit there in awe after the credits roll in the very unique and fascinating way that they do slack-jawed basking in the glow of what you just experienced. I didn’t feel that kind of impact when a game completed again until Death Stranding, and maybe also Red Dead Redemption 2.
Yeah it really was something special. It’s a shame that it just doesn’t appeal to the masses for whatever reason though. I have a few mates who I consider above the ‘filthy casual’ gamer (I have loads who will never ascend from that CoD and FIFA trough though... 😜) but I can not find the right words to pique their curiosity enough for them to even try it, no matter how hard I try.
I really need to give Red Dead Redemption 2 another try. I think I may have been suffering a bit of open-world burnout at the time... as I loved the original and just all Rockstar games in general. I did try to ride it out and get with the program but it just wasn’t clicking. I’m obviously not saying it’s bad, I could tell it was a masterpiece on a number of levels but it just didn’t give me the itch to play it.
@colonelkilgore You’re really correct about RDR2, in that it does depend upon having the right mindset and mood. It’s a game that has to percolate through your gaming psyche to really hit that enjoyment factor. The open world is simply the best one that I’ve ever experienced though. It’s absolutely amazing in the detail and care that went into it. I’m not a GTA fan, so I’ve no idea how well fleshed out the world is there, but some of the world simulation in RDR2 is just flabbergasting that it can be accomplished on PS4 and look so pretty and still run so smoothly. The accuracy of living in the world is too much for some people — having to eat to keep your weight up, shave and get a haircut, etc. But when you accidentally run over a sheep on the road in a random town and go back days later to see the decaying corpse there, then a couple weeks later to see the animal’s skeleton there ...in the exact place you killed it... it’s mind-boggling what Rockstar accomplished here.
And to wrap the whole package in the excellent story telling and character development is the icing on the cake. The ending does not disappoint.
The only complaints I really had were the awkward controls (which I got used to and actually grew to understand the slow methodical movements being intentional to fit the accuracy of the world), and the length of the game. It’s such a huge game and it does feel like it drags a little, partially because it’s easy to go off hunting, fishing, robbing, exploring, chasing side quests, etc... and before you know it you’ve spent 80 hours and the story still isn’t close to being wrapped up. So you have to accept it for what it is — a game that you just ‘mosey’ along through at your own pace and enjoy the ride. Which is hard to do when we all have ginormous backlogs taunting us. So while I was playing RDR2 I got a little impatient toward the latter sections, just wondering when the game was going to wrap things up. And in retrospect I think I did the game a bit of a disservice by getting antsy to finish it. Even with that, the ending is spectacular and sufficiently impactful and well worth the journey to get there. Definitely recommend giving it a go again.
How far did you make it, do you remember? The first section is a bit of a slog in the mountains and snow and the game really hits its stride a dozen or so hours later.
It was a while back but i think it was chapter 3 where I called it a day. I think I had just completed the ‘Romeo & Juliet-esque’ storyline and one of my camp mates asked me to take him fishing. Then I tried hunting for my first legendary animal but it was glitching out and I kept getting a message to say that I needed to come back later which was quite frustrating... and as you mentioned that backlog was calling and I uninstalled.
You’ve certainly made me want to go back and see the story out though... not that keen to go online in an effort to chase the platinum though.
@colonelkilgore Yeah, I had to just ignore a lot of the supplemental side activities. If I ever go back I’d like to find all the dinosaur bones and some of the other collecting quests which I just had to force myself to ignore so I would make progress. I played to max honor and so I was constantly stopping to help people on the road, save NPCs being robbed, etc and finally had to ignore a lot of that too, because it was just never ending. I don’t think I ever got a legendary animal. In fact I spent very little time hunting, mainly just did it for the practical usage of meat for the camp and furs. I think after they introduced fishing, I never went back to fish again. Fishing mini games are probably one of the most over-used side activities in gaming, in my opinion. Why every game has to have fishing is beyond me. Even NieR Automata 😅! JRPGs like to throw it in there all the time. Anyways, I typically ignore fishing and the hunting was fun but I chose to press the narrative stuff more.
As such, I didn’t get near to even sniffing the platinum anyway, much less all the Red Dead Online trophies. Think I ended up at 30% trophy count to the game, and that’s with spending probably 80+ hours.
There’s a thread somewhere on here of top 5 games and I had a list of my top 5 that I’d want to have if stranded on a deserted island with my PS4 and RDR2 is definitely one of them. You can burn hundreds of hours in that virtual world, and adding on RDO that number could balloon into the thousands.
I can’t remember what the other 4 were — I think Bloodborne was one, due to its endless replayability with different builds, and maybe Yakuza 0 due to its eternal distractions of mini-games that you can just sink hours of time into and never complete. The others were probably Horizon Zero Dawn and Assassins Creed Origins for their huge open worlds.
Edit: Actually no — Witcher 3 and Persona 5 were on the deserted island list. Being stuck with nothing else to do would be what I probably need to get through both of those games.
Between Zero Dawn, RDR2 and the Witcher what you you guys choose first? I'v heard horizon zero forbidden west is coming out in 2021 but who knows when this new year. Far Cry 6 is also coming out that might be good.
I’d personally go with Horizon but that’s just the one I personally enjoyed the most and the only one I actually finished. As in the above discussion I fully intend to return to RDR2 though... and The Witcher 3 for that matter (once the PS5 update is launched}.
@tangi_atori Yeah, of those three, probably HZD is the one to go for first. It’s definitely the shortest, but it’s still a pretty sizable game. It depends if you prefer smooth action combat with lots of strategy and different weapons ranged and melee (HZD), more of a slower paced simulation style open world with tons to do where combat is more restricted to third person shooting (RDR2), or if you prefer a fantasy setting with tons of lore and story driven side questing and larger focus on narrative (W3). With Forbidden West coming out, you’ll want to have HZD completed. And like the colonel says, W3 will get a PS5 upgrade supposedly so maybe wait for that. But far and wide most people consider W3 the greatest game of this generation, but it depends on your preferences.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
This “With Forbidden West coming out, you’ll want to have HZD completed” mentioned in @Th3solution ‘s post should/could probably be the deciding factor. You have no deadline on the other two, well unless RDR 3 and The Witcher 4 are announced shortly for 2021 (HIGHLY unlikely)... but with Forbidden West around the corner, you don’t want the story of the original spoiled for you during the sequel’s release buzz.
RDR2 and The Witcher 3 are both so darned good that I didn't want to play anything else and was sad when I finished both games. They're head and shoulders above all other open world games imo.
Persona 5 is the nearest competition when it comes to size and quality whilst The Last of Us Part II is the best linear game I have ever played.
Horizon Zero Dawn is a fantastic game in it's own right and the sequel should be amazing as well.
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t like Persona 5?
I frequently see this as in peoples’ lists of best games of the gen but every time I look at it, it looks a bit too JRPG for me. I don’t mind that style at all but when I read about dating, schoolwork etc I end up rolling my eyes.
The Royal edition is on sale (again) so should I just get on and play it?
@Thrillho I don't like persona 5 either because it is a jrpg ! And I hate jrpgs because it's repetitive in the combat and it is turn based !
The best rpgs nowadays are action rpgs like skyrim , the witcher 3 , outward ...etc and hack n slash arpgs like diablo 3 , path of Exile , wolcen ...etc
On the recommend area , I recommend ghost of tsushima and cyberpunk (after the updates and patches) and maybe wait for diablo 4
I can't say anything about anything specific to the Royal version seeing as I haven't played it but I didn't really enjoy my time with the "vanilla" version of Persona 5 all that much @Thrillho despite enjoying the previous 2 entries done in the same sorta style.
I was pretty hyped for Persona 5 so you could attribute some of my disappointment to overinflated expectations... But even then there's still a bunch of things that just did not work for me.
The first twenty or so hours was great and the first villain, along with the events that transpire, was quite hard hitting and perhaps a bit too real with what goes on. But the villains after that felt more like a mustache twirling Saturday morning kids show villain which just did not work for me at all.
Didn't really gel with the cast a whole bunch either. There were some characters I liked (Mainly secondary/side characters like the doctor, the politician, your homeroom teacher) but... Yeah I didn't like the phantom thieves all that much.
I found them either a bit bland or similar to characters that had already been in the previous two entries. The voice acting is pretty decent at times but... Eh.
I found the script way too repetitive too and the story as a whole just didn't particularly grab me either to be perfectly honest.
One of most subjective points then anything else but the soundtrack didn't do much for me. I'm admittedly not the biggest fan of jazz and unfortunately I'm just not particularly fond of the vocalist featured in the soundtrack. Unsurprisingly the best tracks to me are the instrumental ones.
The turn based combat is pretty nice and enjoyable with the various persona/demons based on mythology and various move sets with you being able to create new persona and alter/fine tune their movesets via fusion. The presentation of the game as a whole is very slick and the anime cutscenes are very nicely done.
But yeah... That's all I got.
If I remember right @kyleforrester87 wasn't a fan of it either? For similar-ish reasons I believe and @Th3solution is/was halfway through a playthrough of it too if I remember right with slightly more positive thoughts?
Of course if you want some opinions from people who did actually enjoy it then I'm sure Ralizah, nessisonett or crimsontadpoles (among many others) can give ya their thoughts too 😄
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Thanks for that. It just felt like this game has been universally loved so I’m still not sure whether I should get over my reservations and give it a go.
Knowing it could well be another 100hr feat also puts me off slightly.
@Thrillho It’s one of those games that people who’ve played earlier games in the series have more reservations about than those who play the game blind. I might prefer Persona 3 or 4 for certain things but 5 is a fantastic game in its own right. Haven’t played Royal yet but I do own it. Just not sure when to set aside 100 hours for a game that I’ve beaten for the most part!
@Thrillho
Like @Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy says, I’m in a weird position as it relates to Persona 5. I don’t dislike the game. In fact, I quite like it... but I can’t seem to get the motivation to finish it. I’ve made it through about a third of the game, I think. I liked Persona 3 and Persona 4 very much. And I even played the rhythm games for both of these, having really enjoyed the characters and music immensely. All that Foxy said about P5 is correct, although I’d say I like the cast probably a little more than she does.
If I try to analyze what my gripes with it are, I think I just don’t like the palaces and combat as much as the dungeons of the former games. The gameplay is similar, but the demon recruitment mechanic is pretty frustrating to deal with. I much preferred the card system in P4. The responses and dialogue choices to try to recruit a demon feel ridiculously random and frustrate me to no end. The palaces themselves are interesting enough stylistically speaking, but they’re overly complex as far as layout, and there’s not enough save rooms for my taste. As a result, the palaces require a large time commitment for each play session, because you could be running around fighting random demons for several hours before you come to a save room. It’s a stark contrast to the other part of the game doing daily life activities which you can save really easily and regularly most days between activities with your confidants.
I suppose it all comes down to the time commitment and also that there doesn’t seem to garner enough curiosity about the storyline to make me come back for more.
I still plan on finishing it, but each time I consider it, another game shines brighter in my field-of-view to dominate my attention. As I look at the next 3-4 games I have planned to play, I just don’t feel like P5 is going to knock any of them off my “on deck” backlog.
I wish I could have played Royal since it sounds like an improvement over the base game, but the thought of starting over does not appeal to me. With dozens of hours already invested, I’m not inclined to go backwards to the beginning again. And perhaps that’s telling.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Thanks. A poor saving feature is a bit of a red flag for me these days as a fair bit of my play time is in the evening before bed so I don’t want the choice between playing for loads longer or losing progress!
Persona 3 is one of my favourite games and Persona 4 is a pretty great time... So it's all the more disappointing to me not liking Persona 5 @Thrillho.
I believe @Ralizah is playing Royal so they might be able to tell you about some of the added stuff in that... Perhaps it has better save features too? They did rework quite a bit of the game to my understanding.
Never had a problem with saving personally in the original Persona 5 but it is a game you need a good few hours of time for too.
@Thrillho As one solution for P5, someone on here (I think it may have been KratosMD) suggested to me to leverage the PS4’s suspend feature to make effectively make it a “save anywhere” type of situation, since you can pause the game and put the PS4 into rest mode at anytime and come back hours or days later and resume where you left off. I’ve tried that a few times, and it is effective, but if your life is like mine, sometimes you can go a long time between play sessions and so I don’t know how you feel about leaving a game suspended for days on end. For me, it is a great feature for the Vita which I use commonly if I get distracted in the middle of a game session, but for PS4 it makes me a little nervous. I have had a power outage once a few years ago when my PS4 was in rest mode and it corrupted some stuff and required a complete hard reset of my console and I had to wipe my HDD and reload everything. It didn’t happen while I had a game suspended, but apparently it happened when the console was downloading an update file overnight and it just screwed everything up. Thankfully it didn’t brick the console and it’s worked fine since the restore. Anyways, now I only leave my PS4 in rest mode for a couple nights tops, and never during a rainstorm.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Forums
Topic: PS4 recommendation thread
Posts 1,401 to 1,420 of 1,867
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic