Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

Thank you @RogerRoger! It was Rydek, it turns out. There is a pivotal moment during the final battle which is basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk3zmfhC6Dw

Apparently only 6% of the players made this choice. I offered a hand every step of the way, I felt like I had done everything I could to show them kindness and mercy and it cost me so much. So when, after all I had lost, they then turn around and beg me to save them? Well... "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you."

I dunno, maybe this wasn't the logical choice, but to me it was the only choice that could be made here, so I was surprised this was such a rarely chosen choice.

The other big divergent point for me was my relationships with Westbrook and Bedrosian. I made Westbrook my first officer, because when you need someone to confide in, it made the most sense to confide in the person who is challenging me every step of the way. My logic was that he'd know given our rocky relationship, I had to be telling the truth to confide in him and when he stuck to his word, stood up for me and saved my life in the encounter that follows, I knew he was the best person to be at my side. This was apparently a choice only made by 2% of the playerbase.

On the flip, I already cost countless lives saving Bedrosian the first time, and God this is one choice I wish I hadn't made. She stuck around then every step of the way as an annoying devil on my shoulder trying to tempt me into constantly making the worst decisions in any scenario. I didn't care when she eventually resigned as I didn't want her awful input anyway. But again, apparently on 2% of the player base had this kind of relationship with her.

I am interested to play it again, there are a series of "mistakes" you can make during the first playthrough that are effectively unavoidable until you have the knowledge you gain from a complete playthrough, so I am interested in how they handle those choices, as there are a bunch of choices Rydek especially in story at certain moments in time would logically have no reason to make and only make sense in the end, so I wonder how they land those moments.

Also thank you for your kind words too @Ralizah!

@Pizzamorg Interesting! And yep, can totally see where you were coming from. I guess maybe it's not the most idealistic Trekkian choice, though? Given that those early stats are gonna be mostly Trekkies, checking out the game without waiting for a discount. I think that's how I ended up approaching most of the major moments, with a kinda "What would Picard or Janeway do here?" mentality (which perhaps isn't fair to Jara and Carter, who are their own characters, after all).

You're right, foreknowledge of the overall story arc totally changes the dynamic of choice-based games. I'm looking forward to my second playthrough, but I'll admit, I'm still pretty confident in some of my previous picks, so it's gonna be tough to go against them! Should be interesting!

That is fair @RogerRoger. When it came to that choice, Westbrook gave an impassioned speech about what we do as part of Starfleet, IE once again show mercy for the thousandth time and ignore all they had done. But this time I just couldn't. I guess that is the cool thing about it being a choice based game, as they let you do the things Captains on the show just wouldn't ever be allowed to do.

Urmott was kind of a weird character in my playthrough. He is the first of the three choices you meet, but outside of that initial interaction, I felt like he sorta falls out of the story. Like he is present during the meetings and bridge sections, but I can't remember any real interactions with him outside of those moments, whereas I felt like I spent so much more time with Westbrook or Bedrosian outside of meetings and the bridge, the most Urmott did in my playthrough was die, get taken over by the enemy and become effectively a boss fight.

@Pizzamorg Oh yeah, absolutely agree! If the characters on the show aren't gonna go to those extremes, then that's what games are for, right? They allow us to explore the "What if...?" moments for ourselves. I just hope that the outcomes are well-written, and make sense in-universe, s'all.

Wait, Urmott can die and become a boss fight...?! I definitely didn't see that in my game!

Yeah! In the climactic battle, I got hit by the bioforming ray which we had no defence for because Solano hid the data breach and I supported him as I didn't know he had been replaced at that point. I was also hesitant to just blown the enemy out of the sky at that point because I was still trying to help them. Urmott was in the section of the ship that got hit by the ray as he was trying to fix our communications. I also lost the young engineer you meet right at the start here and had to take him down. Once taken over, Urmott immediately started trying to sabotage the ship and I had to take him down. Really cool that was a unique interaction to my choices rather than a fixed moment in the story.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Series X) - Impressions

Just finished Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time after 8 hours of playtime. It was an enjoyable experience overall but it has quite a few issues.

First, I'd like to say that the game felt a bit misleading at the start. It felt like it was going to be an Uncharted type of game with a lot of action moments but it wasn't like that. It turned out to be a very laid-back puzzle/platforming/fighting game. This is fine but it's not an exciting game at all because of this, which is disappointing.

The platforming aspect is easily the most fun part of the game. Running on walls, wall jumping, swinging on bars, it's just so cool. This game was really ahead of its time.

The combat is easily the worst part of the game. Not only is there not much variety in terms of moves, but the enemies are mostly unfair and spawn for a long time during each battle. I've found myself in many situations where one enemy knocks me down, another hits me while I'm trying to get up and I fall back down again. Then this keeps happening until I lose all of my health. I literally cannot do anything. I would've disliked the combat even more, but then I realised halfway through that I needed to block more and that made the combat more bearable. But even so, it's still not fun at all.

I also didn't like the camera in this game. It kept changing when you get too close to an object and during battles, it would mess you up frequently.

The time mechanic is cool though. Being able to rewind time whenever you mess up a platforming section is a great idea, especially since you can easily mess up in this game. But even if you do, there's plenty of save and check points. It's a very forgiving game, except for the battles.

In terms of story, I genuinely didn't understand what the goal of the game was until the very end. For numerous hours, you're just solving puzzles, platforming and defeating enemies with no goal in sight. The final section of the game was really annoying as well. Taking away your rewind ability during tough platforming sections is so uncalled for. I did like the ending of the game though.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. There are a fair amount of issues that plague this game. Awful and unfair combat as well as annoying camera to name a few. I do hope that the later entries fix these issues. Either way, I'm glad that I've finally started playing this series. I'm looking forward to playing the sequels down the line.

@Pizzamorg Wow, that sounds totally divergent from my game! Even more credit to the developers for making all of the choices and outcomes matter so much, then!

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@LtSarge Interesting impressions! Shame it hasn't held up as well as its reputation would suggest, but it'll be cool to see how things evolve going forward, so thanks for sharing! Are you going back through the Prince of Persia series because of that new 2.5D entry coming out? I'll admit, the games were never really on my radar before (although I knew of them) but the trailer for The Lost Crown won me over, and I'm seriously tempted by it (which is saying something, because Ubisoft).

@RogerRoger Thanks for reading!

I think deep down, the upcoming game might have influenced me into starting up the first title. Other than that, I just wanted to play an adventure game in all honesty.

I think you'd like this series actually. The first game reminded me a lot of the older God of War games in terms of their structure: platforming, solving puzzles, fighting enemies, rinse and repeat. It also has the feel of an adventure game like Uncharted or Tomb Raider, even though it's more laid-back. Give it a go sometime! I don't know where you could play the first game on PlayStation though. Maybe it's on PS+ Premium as a PS3 title? It's too bad that the remake of the first game got delayed indefinitely.

@LtSarge It's on PS3 if he still has one. I had it still installed on mine when I found it in the basement earlier this year, but I likely won't play it now given the issues you brought up. Oh well, it's in a way my own fault for not playing it over a decade ago when I bought it.

@LtSarge Yeah, the series combat/adventure focus has waxed and waned over the years. That said, none of its previous incarnations have really gotten my heart racing. So glad the new one is basically just historical/fantasy Metroid Dread, lol.

Well, as with many classics, it sounds like the game probably doesn't hold up as well in 2023 as it did when it first came out. Such is the nature of an interactive entertainment medium.

@LtSarge Just wanted to say a belated "thanks for the recommendation" regarding the Prince of Persia series (and thank @KilloWertz for the PS3 tip, too). I think, if the new one ends up grabbing me, it might make for a cool retrospective, kinda like how I went back and played a bunch of old Spidey games in the wake of Insomniac's PS4 game. Will keep your endorsement in mind, as and when!

@RogerRoger You're welcome. Like I said then, I doubt I'll ever play it given the issues mentioned, but it's my own fault. There are several games that I likely would have loved back then that I unfortunately never played that have aged really poorly. Like several other games, it will always be on my PS3's hard drive if I ever change my mind though.

The original Assassin's Creed is another perfect example. Even with the free 4K/60 "remaster" they put out for it on Xbox back when the Xbox One X came out, I still failed to play that much of it because some of the gameplay elements kill the game for me. I wouldn't have known any better back then, so I likely would have ignored issues I'd have with it today.

@KilloWertz Having played the original Assassin's Creed game when it came out, I still found it a but dull to play. The second game was such a huge improvement. It would be difficult going back to the first game having played some of the subsequent games in the series.

@JohnnyShoulder I still haven't played most of the old Assassin's Creed games, although I do plan on remedying that someday (just like with some other series). I have the Ezio Collection installed. I'm not sure how many of the open world AC games I had played at the time, but playing any of them probably didn't help with issues with the original. It was quite annoying not being able to walk around much at all without getting spotted and then not being able to run away as smoothly as you could in the new games.

The only pre-Origins game I've played is Syndicate. I love that game just as much as Origins and Valhalla (Odyssey being the high point of the series for me), but I know I have a lot of work to do. I know I will likely never finish the original, but it will be interesting to see how many of the others I do end up playing.

@JohnnyShoulder @KilloWertz Yeah, I couldn’t make it through the original Assassin’s Creed. The animus parts were really dull and the gameplay parts weren’t much better. Loved the Ezio games though and the rest of the Desmond arc in AC3. For whatever reason I didn’t get along with AC4 and that’s where I jumped off until Origins. Still need to get around to Odyssey one of these days.

@Th3solution Clear a good 150 hours if you plan on doing everything Odyssey has to offer. It's mostly all worth it though (a bit of the DLC is forgettable, but The Fate of Atlantis is fantastic).

@KilloWertz That’s the challenge. I am intimidated by the length.

I have too many lengthy or open world games on my menu right now. And AC Odyssey is down the list some.

Did you play Odyssey on PS5, and if so how is the port? I assume it’s got a nice smooth 60fps, dynamic 4K, and really quick load times.

Odyssey is the only AC game I genuinely love. Kassandra awoke something in me. The loot and light RPG systems go such a long way to keeping things interesting, as does the forgiving ability based combat and range of weapons. The story, world, range of mission types/world activities and historical details are just insane. But yeah, it is like a 100 hour long experience, so not for the faint of heart. Although I put similar hours into Valhalla, but that felt like an absolute slog despite the similar length.

@Pizzamorg How much focus is there on naval battles and/or “naval stealth”? That’s another concern for me because I was one of the few who really didn’t get along with AC4 and a big part of that was due to too much ship stuff. I didn’t mind it in AC3, but when it became it’s own focus for traversal it was tiring.

It’s kind of like swimming and doing underwater activities in games. It’s okay if it’s a slight diversion, but if I have to sway about and fight the water controls too often then I’d just rather not.

I’ll be honest, I actually don’t really remember. You do need to use your boat to push out into the world, both to progress the game but there there are also islands dotted around with really cool stuff on them, but are really there for you to discover rather than being part of the game’s core.

I think there were at least two bosses I faced in the sea (but I don’t remember if they were main or side), plus random encounters on the sea with enemy boats, but it made up a small part of my overall experience but I don’t have much memory of wall to wall sea combat, just using it as a means of transportation.