Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@Ralizah Very informative review, I highly enjoyed reading it. I think it's a bit of a shame that Atlus didn't put enough effort into making this a better remaster in terms of the cutscenes, the audio and so on. Not to mention that they're charging a premium price for it. Despite that, I still thought a lot of the things you mentioned, especially the gameplay, are appealing to me. The way you described it, it sounds like the game plays pretty much like the Persona games and I'm very familiar with that system, so this should be right up my alley. However, I'm not sure that this should be my first SMT game. I tend to play games in release order, which is why I was interested in playing Nocturne as my first SMT title. But stuff like poor remastering and the seemingly annoying dungeon designs kinda puts me off as I want to have the best first experience with a series that I'm starting out with. That's not to say that I'm never going to play the game, it's just that I don't think I want it to be my first SMT game. Right now, I still think I want SMT IV to be my first game in the series. I've actually been wanting to buy it for a long time now on the 3DS but it never goes on sale, but maybe I should just buy it for €20 that it costs now and start playing it. Maybe that will entice me to eventually buy Nocturne down the line as well, but hopefully it will go down in price in the meantime.

@LtSarge Thanks a lot! Yeah, if you've played a modern Persona game, it should be pretty simple to transition over to SMT in terms of the battle system and demon fusing. SMT just tends to be more punishing in terms of damage multipliers and press turn antics (i.e. if an attack bounces off an enemy or you miss, you'll lose multiple press turns).

SMT IV was actually my first SMT game, and my third MegaTen game (after Persona 4 Golden and Devil Survivor: Overclocked). It has a punishing beginning and first dungeon, but if you can push through that, the rest of the game is pretty fantastic. Mechanically, SMT IV: Apocalypse is easily the best transition point for someone going from Persona to SMT, but it does assume familiarity with SMT IV's characters and settings, which makes it less ideal as a first game from a narrative perspective.

As much as I like Nocturne, I probably wouldn't recommend it as a first SMT experience either, tbh. Pretty much every aspect of the series was improved upon in more recent games, which hopefully carries over to the new game releasing in November as well. There are certain things it does do better than every game in the series as well, though. If you enjoy whatever game you start with, it's definitely one worth playing at some point in your life. Atlus discounts its games pretty heavily in the States, so hopefully the same remains true where you live.

@RogerRoger I probably should have started replaying the older games sooner so I could have gotten through SMT II and SMT If... as well, but I'll just return to those after SMT V. I'd like to review all of the MegaTen games at some point. Even the obscure, Japanese-only ones that has received fan translations.

But yeah, even if SMT V doesn't live up to the hype, there's still a pile of games I already know are great I could return to. It'd be a crying shame, though. Like Persona 5, this is Atlus' best opportunity to have the series go big. It's getting a ton of attention, Nintendo is pushing it hard, it's releasing on the hottest device on the market at the prime of its life, etc.

For the record, I only paid $50 for this. I wanted a physical copy, but, even if I didn't, I'll never support predatory "early release" pricing. Like with Nintendo, I absolutely love Atlus at their best, so it's disappointing to see them stooping to these sorts of tactics. Granted, Atlus games have had tons of DLC even going back to the 3DS era, but they also launched polished, complete products, and usually rewarded early adopters with free artbooks, soundtrack samplers, key chains, etc. SMT IV launched at a $10 premium on 3DS, but it also came with a sturdy collector's box and a well-illustrated 100+ page book that covered the first major chunk of the game.

The funny thing is that Sega owns Atlus now, so technically both this and Sonic Colors can be called "lazy Sega-published remasters."

But yeah, even if the port isn't ideal, it's still Nocturne on a modern portable console, y'know? I was never not going to enjoy it, although I did want to be honest about the flaws in the game and especially in the game's remastered version.

I'm not sure I was fully satisfied with this piece when I posted it (several sections were rewritten several times, tbh), so I'm glad to know it reads well.

As always, thanks for reading!

@RogerRoger I pre-ordered the $120 + tax Fall of Man Edition, which I almost never do, but... y'know. It wasn't easy, lemme tell ya: many hours of refreshing random storefronts and keeping an eagle eye on communities where people were posting info about them. Atlus was planning to drop the links to the edition at a specific time, but there many stores took days to put the links up and it caused anger and disruption among the people going for one. I actually ordered two of them in case one of them was delayed or something. I figured I could probably flip whichever one came later, but a friend of mine actually wants one as well, so I'll just sell it to him instead.

Well, it's weird. Atlus has been putting out decent Switch remasters of their games. Like Catherine: Full Body. Great version of the game, and it came with all previously released DLC included on the cart by default. Yet a much higher profile remaster like this, one that's supposed to build up hype for probably their most expensive project ever, is given a sloppy release like this? I don't get it.

With that said, I've not once been disappointed by the quality of a new game of theirs, and even if this release wasn't ideal, it didn't freeze on me, didn't crash, and there were no nightmarish glitches like in the Switch version of Sonic Colors, so it's still sadly better quality-wise than a ton of big releases out there!

@RogerRoger Having recently tried the game, it’s a pleasant surprise to see and read your review of Rez Infinite. And I appreciate the anecdote of how it helps you to relate to your Nan.

Honestly, I put the game on a couple months ago when it was offered on PS+ on a whim. Hearing that it was short I figured it would fit in nicely on a Saturday afternoon before devoting my time to other endeavors that evening. Unfortunately, I found it strangely difficult to play and not enjoyable. It felt more dated than I was expecting, and the input, albeit simple, didn’t feel intuitive at all to me. I probably gave the game 15-20 minutes of a trial, and quickly ended my gaming session, whether because I wasn’t enjoying it or because something else pulled me away I can’t remember — but the end result was I didn’t make it very far and really haven’t had a desire to go back.

I don’t mean to be too much of a wet blanket on your chiefly positive review, and in fact am glad to see the title get some attention. Reading your experience has me now contemplating if I could gel with it if I gave it another shot where it wasn’t an afterthought squeezed into a open half hour on a busy weekend. …Or maybe I really am as musically incompetent as my school instructors used to say 😅

@RogerRoger Wow! Great review!

First off, can I just mention I really like these title banners you've been using? I don't know where you're finding them or how you're making them (photoshop?), but they look extremely nice.

Second off, really effective way of drawing on your personal experience via your anecdote about your nan's chromesthesia. The human brain really is a fascinating thing. That very personal touch really added to the piece, and I thank you for sharing it.

I've wanted to play this game for a long time. I didn't actually know it was on the PS4, if I'm being honest! Nevertheless, given my time with another one of Mizuguchi's sense-tingling games (Tetris Effect), I definitely get what you mean about the almost hypnotic way it probably combines music, sound, movement, and color

Not surprised it's short if it's a rail shooter, which tend to be games designed to be replayed for score-chasing purposes, or maybe, in the case of a game like this, to enjoy an afternoon once in a while with something utterly entrancing.

As always, very, very well-written. Your command of the written word is fearsome.

Considering how focused you usually are on harvesting gorgeous screenshots, I'll take the fact that you were so engrossed in this that you only got (perfectly serviceable) normal ones to be a sort of recommendation of the game in its own right.

@RogerRoger Great write-up mate! The way you describe the game makes me very eager to check it out for myself. I believe it was given away for free during the PlayStation Stay At Home campaign, so I think I have it in my PS4 library to play. Surprised to hear that the game is so short though, but hey I don't mind short games every now and then! Not to mention that it looks like a very unique game and you know how much I love unique games. Will definitely have to give it a go soon.

@RogerRoger Great write-up mate and I'm glad to see you back, haven't seen you on the forums in a while now!

I feel like Ghost of Tsushima is the perfect example of PlayStation exclusives feeling too similar. Not only did it come out on the tail-end of PS4's life cycle when most people have already experienced the likes of Spider-Man, God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn and are most likely tired of the formula, but it just seems to play things way too safe. I remember watching new gameplay of the game before it launched last year and everyone was comparing the combat to other franchises such as Assassin's Creed.

I made a thread last week about games being more of the same and I feel like Ghost of Tsushima is a good example of that. It's probably a solid title for those that haven't played many of these games before, but it doesn't do anything new and different compared to previous games for us who have played tons of these games already. Games in general are simply becoming more of the same and I hear that from a lot of people as well because so many on this site are constantly saying that they are bored of playing certain games, which I'm guilty of as well! There's nothing wrong with that, it's just how the state of the industry is like right now.

I don't know if you read my first post in that thread, but yeah I just feel like most games these days are just more of the same compared to the 90s when we were constantly getting brand new experiences. Video games have obviously never been as good as they are today, but is that actually a good thing? There's no progression in the industry anymore, we're constantly seeing similar experiences.

Getting back to your review, it is kinda weird that Sucker Punch made a game where there aren't different choices that affect the story. I mean, their last franchise, inFAMOUS, was all about having good or bad karma based on choices you've made. So to not see something like that in Ghost of Tsushima is quite disappointing and I definitely agree with you there.

I haven't played Ghost of Tsushima yet but I'm definitely afraid that I'll end up with the same opinion of it as you, which is why I've been holding off on getting it. And even if I buy it, it might take years before I stomach up the courage to start it up as I really want to like it but I absolutely have to be in the right mood for it.

@RogerRoger Wonderful review and I can’t disagree with some of your criticisms (and points of praise). Specifically the issue of copy and paste gameplay is one that can’t be ignored. For me, the nuance of how the world is navigated, and the really stellar artistry of the world made the ‘samey’ gameplay formula more palatable. Perhaps it’s telling that I haven’t run out and grabbed the Iki Island DLC yet. Nor have I yet wanted to tackle another huge open world map icon-chaser from my backlog yet (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Days Gone, Miles Morales, Immortals, and heck even Frozen Wilds all sit there perched at the ready but I can’t bring myself to dive into). Open world fatigue is definitely a thing.

I think that when I played GoT I did so over an extended period of time, I think the game took me on the order of 3 months to finish, and I had a few short breaks in the middle where i played little diversions like Erica, NBA2K and DOOM intermixed between chasing the Ghost platinum. With a little self-imposed pacing, I found the experience to be fantastic.

Speaking of which, did the redundancy of the open world experience thwart a platinum attempt or do you reckon you got it in you?

@RogerRoger Nice thoughts and much I agree with. The duels always felt really cool and were normally impressive set pieces with their location too.

But the main combat did get samey. It was nice that failing a sneaky approach didn’t feel like it punished you but it was rare that multiple enemies attacking you felt like a threat.

I also felt that it let you unlock all the cool stuff really early on, other than Ghost mode, so there didn’t feel much combat progression after the first “chapter”.

@RogerRoger I really liked the special armour set on Iki that removed blocking but increased the parry window. The special duels with the wooden swords were a cool addition too.

I have to admit I used the combat items very infrequently as I often forgot about them or felt it was too much fiddling around to swap items around in the middle of combat. Ghost mode was fun to use when there were lots of enemies but rarely a game changer.

EDIT: I also really like your Iki monkey pic from the review!

@RogerRoger Top notch puns in the picture captions

@RogerRoger Welcome back! And with another great review.

Your point about all of the game's objectives boiling down to 'go here, stab these guys' is fair, and I could see how playing multiple objective-laden open world map games in a row would exhaust you a bit. The trade-off between freedom and content diversity in open world vs linear games has long been an issue, of course, since there's arguably a degree of uniformity required in the content of games that allow you to run around and do whatever you want on the map. And for people who aren't fans of cinematic video games, the same sort of weariness can set in when the player has to spend long stretches of time tilting the analog stick up as the player is slowly railroaded through a series of set-pieces and environments that amount to little more than pretty scenery. This is why, more often than, mixing elements of these two design extremes produces better games overall.

Usually the best remedy for weariness with games designed in similar ways is to play stuff that's entirely different, so, yeah, maybe it's for the best if you delay your trip to the Forbidden West. It's not like the game won't drop in price. Sony was literally giving HZD away last year, and it was only a year or two after release before they had it down to bargain bin prices.

Your screenshots are stunning, and, given the beauty of the game in general, I imagine you must have spent a good chunk of those 60 hours fiddling around with photo mode.

I do think you're right about the experience being respectful to the culture. It was well-received in Japan, and the game, as I recall, stimulated interest in helping to preserve historical landmarks on the island. It's a cool way to draw attention to a thoroughly underexplored setting with a rich history.

Which language did you choose to experience the game in, btw? I recall one of the touted bonuses of this version of the game on PS5 was lip-syncing that matched the Japanese audio track.

Interesting point about games becoming so high-quality that we fixate more on their flaws, although this is probably to be expected from developers who are so accomplished that excellence becomes the norm. You often see the same dynamic at play in interpersonal relationships and in parenting.

I think it's easier to be critical because of the sheer number of high-quality games that are out there as well. We're drowning in very good-to-excellent games these days, so simply being very good-to-excellent is no longer enough for a game to stand out anymore.

Well, anyway, like I said, excellent review. Hopefully a sequel manages to make the dialogue choices more meaningful, and Sucker Punch finds a way to diversify its gameplay going forward so it feels a bit less like Assassin's Creed: Japan or whatever.

@RogerRoger I messed around with Legends mode once or twice. And although I found it to be a very high quality multiplayer addition, especially considering it was a free add-on, I couldn’t stick with it for any length of time. I’m not ruling out going back to it one day, but I just have too much on the single-player front to tackle.

@RogerRoger great review Rog… I thoroughly enjoyed GoT (‘uncut by the director’ version 😉) but I certainly see and understand your points. I am a sucker for open-world action-adventures though in fairness. Really well written too, it was a pleasure.

@RogerRoger Good to know and I’d echo the offer too, should you ever want to make a run at 100%-ing the trophy list and need a collaborator, or if you just feel the drive to jump back into feudal Japan from a multiplayer standpoint just for kicks.

The approach with most modern open world games is to mix the complete openness of exploratory game design with, yeah, highly scripted sequences more like something you'd encounter in a story game, and my experience is that the two aspects never fully sit comfortably together.

But yeah, if almost nothing ever surprises you, it'd get boring quickly. Which sounds like the fruit of an unimaginative script.

It'll only get cheaper and better, yes. And the thing people really don't get is that the games aren't going anywhere. One doesn't miss out on a game if one doesn't gain access to it the moment it hits the open market.

Same issue with sales. People act like they'll never get a game at a certain sale price again, but, almost always, the price of the game is going to sink at least that low, if not lower, in the future, since demand tends to only sink over time. This is putting aside issues like games with small print runs running out, of course. It tends to be smarter to snag games like those ASAP if one want a disc or cartridge for their physical collection. There are still a few 3DS games I regret sleeping on.

Recognizing and defeating irrational consumerist impulses is important but difficult with so many high-quality games coming out all the time these days.

What's the new game, btw?

Heh. You sound like my mother. She always asks me how I watch what's happening on the screen when I'm reading subtitles. When I tell her one's brain kinda rewires itself to do both simultaneously, she looks at me like I'm an alien or something!

You know I've never actually played one of those games for more than 30 minutes or so? Something about the way they control drives me up a wall.

Also managed to have access to at least two Xbox consoles and still haven't touched a Halo game!

It's been delayed more than half a week. So I went ahead and pre-loaded a digital copy so I could start playing it on Friday.

Says the person who, just a few paragraphs up, lectured about the importance of defeating irrational consumerist impulses.

Although I did split the cost with a family member who I share accounts with, so it's less wasteful than it could have been.

@RogerRoger Open world games are interesting, because there's a sort of rhythm to the more formulaic ones, and people tend to either find it boring or soothing. I find, if I like the game, it's easy to enter a sort of zen state where you're barely even conscious of what you're doing for long stretches of time. It's the same sort of pleasure you might gain from casually and methodically cleaning up a garage, except the skinnerian game design supplements the checklists you're cleaning up with little rewards that keep you playing.

This is addicting, but can also make you feel weirdly unfulfilled after your mammoth play sessions. It's sort of like gorging on fast food.

I actually had no idea Tomb Raider featured Japan as a location at all. I've owned it on PC for years and never played it, and also bought it for cheaps on PS4 earlier this year (less than $4 in a digital sale seemed worth it). Maybe at some point I'll actually play it.

Yeah, I think my approach to buying games is going to change going forward, considering the size of my backlog and just how damn long it takes to play most of these things. I felt a little bad when I preloaded SMT V, since I already have an expensive physical version coming and it seemed like it was probably a bit of a waste of money. But then I realized that, despite my extravagance with this release, I was chomping at the bit to play it. That $150 or so I'm spending on the game is still going to one hell of a fun time (hopefully!), and I also get a fancy collector's item that'll probably fetch me double what I initially paid for it if I ever decide to sell it. Whereas how much money have I wasted now buying games on sale that I don't get to for years, or ever? 99.9% of these games aren't going to go away or stop going on sale any time in the near future. Going forward, purchases are reserved exclusively for games I'm actively super excited for. Everything else can wait however many years it takes me to get to them.

I think I'll just leave my collector's edition as a nice showpiece and play my digital version. It's objectively more convenient for someone like me with multiple Switch consoles. No need to juggle cartridges or even worry about backing up save data manually, because digital games can be configured so that, the moment you close out of them, the data backs up to the cloud and auto uploads itself to your other Switch consoles. It'll make going back and forth between my launch model and the Lite painless.

Growing up as a snooty teenage weeb helped train me to read subtitles like a champ, since so much stuff was Japanese-only, and the stuff that was dubbed in english was almost unlistenable half the time. The skill is probably harder to pick up if you don't cook it into your still developing brain at a young age.

Yeah, like, some of the AC games look interesting. Like, with the Egypt one, it apparently has some sort of educational mode where you learn about the history of the culture, and I actually really like that, but... y'know, I could probably watch some youtube videos on it for free and not have to deal with the janky gameplay and bizarre sci-fi metastory that connects the series together. It's like the Saw movies: the series kept just... chugging along with the same serialized narrative thread like some ultra-gory soap opera, and if you missed a movie you had no idea what the hell was going on in the newest entry.

I'm not especially miffed about missing out on Halo. It just struck me as funny. Like owning Nintendo consoles but never playing Mario games. Some game series are simply synonymous with their associated console brands.

@RogerRoger

That's a good approach to trophies. It's weird, because I both like and dislike trophies. There are definitely some games I've 100%ed on Switch and older platforms where I thought to myself: "Gee, it would've been nice to have something to commemorate this occasion." Sometimes, the trophy just feels like a part of the experience, and it's just slightly lesser without that meaningless digital badge to add to your collection. And there are plenty of games where the promise of a trophy motivated me to experience them more fully, which, on the whole, I feel is a good thing.

On the other hand, trophies can also undermine a sense of completion I have with a game. There are plenty of times I've beaten a game to my satisfaction but was a bit miffed to notice a low-to-mid trophy clear percentage. People can also become addicted to trophies to the degree that they refuse to even play on older, trophy-less platforms. And, of course, there's an entire cottage industry of rubbish games designed to give people "easy platinums."

For my part, I use complete trophy sets to commemorate games that really gripped me. Although I have my limits: as much as I loved (and played the hell out of) Rayman Legends, that trophy that requires grinding online challenges for months on end will never not be ridiculous.

That's an issue with Western adventure narratives in general. So many of them fixate on a few cultures and ignore vast swaths of largely buried history.

It's weird with Japan. So overrepresented in gaming media in general, yet aspects of its history and mythology are barely explored.

Replaying favorites is definitely something I need to do more of. Get off the treadmill of unplayed backlog and new games a bit, and revisit something I love. I've wanted to replay the Lunar games for years, for example, so I really should just make time for them soon. What's the point of keeping games if I never replay them, after all?

Didn't the Skywalker Saga LEGO games release on seventh gen consoles? Or is this a remaster?

Yeah, cloud saves are locked behind an NSO subscription. But it's worth it for me. Although it still annoys me that a number of first-party releases don't support the cloud saving feature.

Ah, so your brain works according to sitcom logic, then!

Infinitely better. Which, I suppose, is a natural result of the medium becoming more popular worldwide.

What sort of unfortunate event has to occur to own half a Mario game? Be careful around those buzzsaws!

I have around four hours or so recorded on my save file (closer to five, in reality, because I've died a lot thanks to my insistence on playing on the hardest difficulty), and I still feel like I've spent barely any time with the game today.

@mookysam We had some gigantic spider that hung out in our window for a long time. Looking her up, though, she was totally harmless. Freaked out my nephew something fierce, but it wound up being a comforting sort of presence in the mornings for me.

@RogerRoger Can't snag the Bond trophies because of online integration, I'm guessing? When there are online trophies, I almost never even bother, since they're so time-limited and involve engaging with other humans, which I generally detest when I want to play a game at my own pace. At least Rayman's online challenges are against ghost data from other players. Asynchronous online multiplayer is generally the only sort I can stomach.

I played Okami a few years ago when the HD version released on Switch. I... wasn't a huge fan. Maybe you'll enjoy it more, but, given your lack of regard for traditional Zelda game design, I have my doubts about that. If absolutely nothing else, though, it is a very pretty game.

Ah, so it's all of the movies, and an entirely new game. I could see why you'd be excited for that. Hopefully it doesn't disappoint!

Pretty much every third party game supports the cloud saving feature. It's only Nintendo's developers who seem to look for reasons why they can't support a basic feature of NSO. Animal Crossing actually has some sort of cloud backup feature now, but it's a different system than the one used in NSO.

Ah, you're not keeping me from anything! Putting aside normal responsibilities, I have to take breaks occasionally, because if I play for too many hours at a time my eyes hurt and I get the beginnings of a headache. I have no idea how people who play games for 10+ hours at a time do it. I'd be a zombie by that point.

@RogerRoger The Rayman online challenges are actually quite fun. It's one of my favorite platformers from last gen. I just hate that you have to grind them every day for months to get a particular trophy. I would have had the platinum trophy years ago otherwise, because I 100%ed the game.

OK, so Okami is styled after classic Zelda games, but, in general, in every way they're comparable, it's inferior. For example, the dungeon design in the game is just awful, and is lacking the strong theming and unique puzzles that make those locations so memorable in Nintendo's series. In place of the sometimes unintuitive overworld puzzles in Zelda games, you have even more unintuitive overworld puzzles that require you to make strokes with a celestial paint brush that's difficult to control. The only consistently easy way I found to control it was playing the game in handheld mode on the Switch and using the touch screen to make the brush strokes. Either way, it's finicky, and, even worse, integrated into combat, so you'll frequently have to slow combat to a crawl to awkwardly make paintbrush strokes to help defeat certain enemies. And the game frequently doesn't recognize the pattern you're trying to make (at least, in my experience), so you'll sometimes have to repeat some of the more complex patterns multiple times before they'll register.

Also, on a more subjective note, Amaterasu's traveling companion, Issun, is one of the most obnoxiously misogynistic characters I've ever met in a video game. Imagine if you were playing a Zelda game and your fairy companion spent most of it making gross comments about women's bodies.

IMO, it's a game whose strong reputation relies almost entirely on the gorgeously stylized presentation.

Maybe the sequels will be better in Lego form? I have to admit, the thought of the Holdo maneuver causing Star Destroyers to explode into millions of lego pegs makes me chuckle.

Oh yeah, that's definitely classic Nintendo. Third parties also made the best overall use of the Wii U GamePad. Nintendo likes to make stuff and then pretend it doesn't exist afterward. Granted, MOST Nintendo games also use the cloud save system, but some of the biggest titles that it would make the most sense for don't: stuff like Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Splatoon, etc.

I've definitely had a couple of 5 - 6 hour play sessions so far. Not usually my style, since I'm not one for doing the same activities for long periods of time, but it's hard to tear myself away. Actually, I've been fighting a boss as I type this.