Topic: What PS4 Games Are You Currently Playing?

@Ralizah Haha well keep me updated if you get back to it, you prepping for SMT V?

@RogerRoger It's cool to see that you've discovered the greatness of the Ace Attorney series! You have so many great games ahead of you. My personal favourites are Apollo Justice (the fourth game) and Spirit of Justice (the sixth one).

Out of curiosity, are you a fan of visual novels? Or perhaps become one now thanks to AA? If so, there are so many great series for you to sink your teeth into. For example, if you like Ace Attorney then I think you're going to like Danganronpa as well since both series are similar in terms of gameplay structure. Another phenomenal visual novel is Steins;Gate, which I played through a while ago and absolutely adored. All of these games can be experienced on the Vita, so I highly recommend them when you're done with Ace Attorney!

@TraCuz- I'll definitely get back to it sooner than later. And, yeah, almost all of my gaming activity until November is going to be with a "better mop this up before SMT V takes over my life" mindset.

@RogerRoger @nessisonett Turnabout Big Top is an alright, 6.5/10 sorta case, but the fanbase reflexively hates it so much that I've become a tad defensive of it. Especially when something like Turnabout Samurai was boring and had as much outdated humor as it does, and basically nobody utters a bad word about it because the first game is untouchable in fan circles, even though it'd be the worst game in the trilogy if 1-5 hadn't been tacked on in the game's re-releases.

IMO, 1-1 is the only actually bad case in the OG trilogy. Justice For All is actually a pretty consistently decent game. Its biggest sin is that it doesn't match the narrative high notes of the other two games. It's the 'bad' game in the trilogy in the same way that Return of the Jedi was the 'bad' film in the original Star Wars trilogy.

@Ralizah 2-1 is surely worse than 1-1? I don’t normally count the first cases as they’re all tutorials but 2-1 is just dreadful. I agree that Samurai and Big Top really are a bit similar but Big Top has circus characters and so automatically is deducted 1000000000000 points.

@nessisonett Nah. 1-1 is basically the most simplistic thing ever. It barely qualifies as a mystery, either. Even Danganronpa 1's first case is better, and that has the most obvious and insulting clue in the history of mystery fiction. 2-1 is at least conceptually interesting with the amnesia wrinkle.

Most fans don't count the tutorials, but we probably should, right? Trials and Tribulations has a really good tutorial case (I like it more than the second and third cases in that game, frankly), and the tutorial case in Apollo Justice is arguably the best non-final case in the entire series (too bad the rest of the game is all downhill from there, lmao).

Well, see, I guess that's the thing: I thought the circus themes and characters fit in with the absurdist feel of much of the trilogy. Plus, most of the circus troupe is so openly weird or pathetic that they circle back around to being hilarious. The only thing I can't forgive it for is that painful sequence where the judge penalizes you for pressing the clown unnecessarily.

@Th3solution @Jimmer-jammer In RDR2 I just completed another light-hearted story mission, helping the Reverend Swanson out when he was in his cups, and after killing the witness to a man I assaulted dying whilst I was helping the Reverend, I saved him (the Reverend) and myself from certain death on the train tracks Do you remember that mission? Looking forward to how that character develops and what's next in store.

@TheBrandedSwordsman For some reason I don’t really recall that mission per se. The game has so much content that I seem to have a fuzzy memory on the smaller side content. How are you on you honor rating? Are you more toward honorable or more toward dishonorable?

Ha ha I saw your avatar on PSN yesterday was now of Miles Edgeworth @RogerRoger... So I wasn't too surprised to see you've now changed your avatar on here either. Cute gif btw!

Good to see you've been enjoying yourself so far with Ace Attorney! I hope you continue to enjoy it Rog! I'll get round to them eventually!

Only problem now is will you get too absorbed by it and leave Ghost Of Tsushima hanging a little longer then intended for some wacky courtroom shenanigans? 😄

Thought I might as well move this chunk over here seeing as I was going to ask you about it & God Of War @Ralizah.

You've said before of where your memory card crapped out on you in Nocturne Ral... I can't fully remember where though for the life of me. The prison perhaps was it?

Congrats on making it past wherever you were though!

What ending are you gunning for that isn't TDE? The neutral one?

Your idea of leaving an end game save and going to do TDE after is probably the best thing as doing most of the end game content will probably leave you overlevelled/overpowered if you attempt it (Especially going after all the magatama and the likes)

There are some fun bonus bosses though that's for sure in Nocturne.

Only problem with that plan of course is the final dungeon the Tower Of Kagatsuchi.

My god... IT'S SO FUDGING LONG. Enjoy all the teleportation puzzles!

RE: God Of War

I'm not too sure where your posts are about it (forgive me) ... I'm going assume you initially thought it was just ok, nothing too special, and now you're starting to warm up to it a little? Perhaps as i've heard in that it opens up a little more?

@Th3solution Definitely more toward honorable, although I didn't pay off the last bounty so that will count in the favour of dishonor. How's FFVIIR going?

@Th3solution Also how does Micah not die after you break him out of jail, during the shootout, I kept expecting to see a notice saying I'd failed the mission because he was just so trigger-happy! He's shooting up the town, left, right and centre, without getting killed himself at any point in the precedings! With regard to the bounty, though, I just keep my bandana on all the time now and hope for the best!

@TheBrandedSwordsman Yeah, I do remember Micah and that sequence how he was so trigger happy and foolhardy. And as far as playing as honorable or not, I’ve often wondered how the game would feel differently if it were played full renegade. It’s against my nature to do so, but it would also be annoying to have to deal with the law chasing you all the time.
I played a little FF7R yesterday but didn’t make a ton of progress, although I did obtain a new summon materia — which gives you the ability to summon a powerful mythical being to help in battle. I do wish the game let you use the summons more often, but as is, it will only be available during major encounters like boss fights. I guess they felt summons were too overpowered to use against the standard enemies, but in the original game you could use them against any enemy you chose.
I’ve taken a bit of a left turn however and started playing Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight alongside. I got hooked on it yesterday and I’m finding it harder to put it down. It’s a rhythm game, simple in concept, but fun to play as a supplementary game to the main one. I finished Persona 5 base game a couple months ago so this also has some added story, albeit very light.

@RogerRoger That makes sense and I agree with you. At first I absolutely loved JRPGs because they were new to me, but in recent times I've realised that not all JRPGs are great and that shouldn't come as a surprise. But in the beginning when I discovered JRPGs, I truly liked all of them. It's the same thing now when I'm finally discovering horror games as I used to not like them at all before. I've been slowly playing through franchises and now I've fallen absolutely in love with Resident Evil. I doubt that would've happened if I had already experienced my fair share of horror games, as there are plenty of other games that have improved upon the survival horror formula since then, such as Dead Space. So I guess for me, when discovering new franchises as well as genres I'm not familiar with, the fact that both are new to me plays a huge role in my fondness for the games. In that regard, I may be a bit biased for the franchises I love now that I think about it. Never thought about it like that, I think I just made a huge self-discovery thanks to you!

Either way, it's great to see another person discover a new franchise and becoming engrossed in it. That feeling of finding something new that you truly adore is rare and I constantly seek that feeling as I have already played so many different games that not much appeals to me anymore. Typically, games that appeal to me the most are story-based games like visual novels and JRPGs. There have been a few times where open world titles have also appealed to me tremendously, such as Breath of the Wild and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I guess those games worked for me because they offered refreshing experiences compared to other titles. And that's what I want to see in games: innovation, creativity and unfamiliarity. In layman's terms, I basically want to see new stuff, which is hard to pull off these days as it's always a risk for companies. But I'll always support creative approaches because those are what appeal to me the most.

@Th3solution @Jimmer-jammer I just completed the mission entitled Money Lending and Other Sins, by tracking down, beating up and then looting the house of Mr. Wroble for his valuables in order to recover the debt he owed to Herr Strauss and the gang, do you guys remember much about Herr Strauss? I also unlocked the ledger and camp upgrades which should unlock fast travel later, when i can afford it, I think there is a nice gold bar coming up at the end of Chapter 2 so that should help with such matters

@Jimmer-jammer You say Swanson's life mirrors your own? 😂 Great stuff.

@Th3solution @Jimmer-jammer I also got killed by bounty hunters midway through that mission, woke up miles away and rode back to camp to complete it.

@TheBrandedSwordsman Yeah, unlocking the extra parts of the ledger and the fast travel really opens up the game, as I recall. And I definitely remember Herr Strauss. He’s not one of the main characters but I always tried to follow his storyline.
Are you spending a lot of time doing sandbox activities, hunting, helping civilians, searching for treasure, etc,? Or are you trying to mainline the story? Depending on your personality, there are dozens of hours of gameplay to lose yourself in, but beware that the story is long in and of itself.
As for me, I did a little of both. Didn’t do a ton of hunting for legendary animals and such, but I enjoyed following up to help out random NPC’s I encountered and searching for treasure. There are a ton of side quests though that I barely scratched the surface on however, like the digging up dinosaur fossils and things like that. Just the main story is very satisfying alone.

@Th3solution I am looking forward to utilizing those features of the game, with regard to the side content, I'm definitely trying to mainline the story, because it is, as you say, "long in and of itself". I wonder if they named Herr Strauss after the German composer!

@Th3solution How is FFVIIR going? Have you found that you're able to bond with the characters any more than previously?

@TheBrandedSwordsman Yes, I played a little more of FF7R this weekend, although not as much as I’d have liked. And yes, I really like Aerith. When I played the original game as a lad years ago I didn’t really bond with her. But the presence of voice acting has really helped to give her some personality. She’s adorable and I can better understand her and Cloud’s relationship and interactions now.
Cloud also has started to become a little less annoying by this point. To be sure, he’s supposed to be cold and boring in the early hours as part of the story, but they have done a pretty good job of gradually showing his softer side. I’m still not far enough in to give full impressions but that’s where I am for the time being.

@RogerRoger Most Ace Attorney games have an odd piece of evidence or a testimony or something where the player will struggle because there's a mismatch between the game's sense of logic and your own, but, in general, the difficulty doesn't really increase over the course of the trilogy. RFtA is probably the most difficult case in the trilogy insofar as it makes use of the increased power of the NDS to fashion new types of evidence and gameplay, but even that isn't too bad. They're about as accessible as adventure games get, IMO.

But yeah, I'd definitely manually save where possible, because you never know when you'll run into a spot of trouble. I'm pretty impressed you got through the first four cases without needing to re-load a save file at all!

I'll definitely be curious to hear your further thoughts about RFtA as you play through it. It's a gigantic case, so you'll probably be working on it for a while.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I think it was after the prison. I forget where it was. Although probably not significantly after the prison. I'll be going for the neutral ending probably, yeah. I'd prefer a return to the previous status quo over any other totalizing solution to the question of how reality should be organized. Returning to do the TDE should be fairly simple, as I've beaten all the fiends up to this point, I believe.

The last dungeon can't be as long and annoying as the one in SMT IV: Apocalypse. Probably one of the worst dungeons ever in one of the otherwise best video games I've ever played. Atlus can do great final dungeons, though. The last dungeon in P5R's third semester is probably the best one in the entire game.

RE: God of War... it starts off feeling very distinctly like a Naughty Dog game, where you have no real agency over what's happening, and the story-telling and dialogue and whatnot are fully integrated into the normal gameplay, so you feel like you're on a guided tour of that universe. It's a style of game design that only works well in something like Uncharted, IMO, and I deeply hate its application anywhere else. When a lot of the early gameplay involved solving basic environmental puzzles to help Atreus along, I felt distinctly nauseous, because I was certain this meant the entire game was going to be like The Last of Us, which eschewed the puzzles and ridiculous setpieces of Uncharted in favor of an endless string of busywork sections (pulling crates, carrying planks, etc. etc. to help Ellie cross environments) punctuated by bland, mechanically simplistic sequences where you run around mindlessly murdering mooks. I've not really been quiet about TLOU being one of the worst video game experiences I've had to date, and it looked like this was going to be a repeat of it.

But things have improved. I've entered a point in the game where the narrative only occasionally intrudes on the gameplay, and I can choose to just poke around certain side areas if I like (some of which are actually pretty well-designed). The skills you open up throughout the game significantly improve combat and makes it a lot faster and more fun. Only one really fun setpiece so far, but the bosses are starting to become more memorable.

It won't be a "zomg 10/10" sorta game for me, but I've gone from nearly hating it to thinking it's... pretty decent. Although it has been a week since I've played it.