Gryzor

Steam Machines are a threat to Windows gaming. My Steam library can't wait to finally ditch that intrusive Microsoft OS.

Cult? Legendary?😵‍💫
Toshinden is utter trash and I've only bought it back in the day, because there was hardly anything else to play, when the Playstation lanched. It aged horribly, to boot.🙄

The Trails remake is my GOTY so far, with Clair Obscur and Silksong completing the top three. Falcom really nailed it this time.🤩

Considering the cliffhanger at the end of 1st chapter, Falcom probably won't let us wait for too long either.
I've gone absolutely mental and played the Trails demo in every imaginable way:

• PS5 on OLED TV
• Steam Deck handheld and docked to a VGA CRT
• PC with 3D glasses on a 3D monitor
• Switch handheld and docked to a VGA CRT
• Switch 2 handheld and docked to an OLED TV

My conclusion is that, although I'd love to play through the full game with at least 3 of the above setups, the sane approach would be to pick only one of them.🤪
Ahh, first-world problems...🤷🏻‍♂️

Just fired up the PC-demo and activated Nvidia 3D Vision - 3D glasses and all - for full effect and immersion. Although it's legacy tech, it still kicked in.
I'm absolutely blown away by this remake. It's the best thing Falcom has ever done and somehow runs rings even around my personal favorite RPG-series, Dragon Quest. Day one purchase and game of the decade for me.

@rjejr Yeah, Famitsu readers are hardcore Japanese gamers. They really like their RPGs. This poll is from 2006 and the highest western title is GTA Vice City, sitting at number 76.💀
1. Final Fantasy X (2001)
2. Final Fantasy VII (1997)
3. Dragon Quest III (1988)
4. Dragon Quest VIII (2004)
5. Machi (visual novel) (1998)
6. Final Fantasy IV (1991)
7. Tactics Ogre (1995)
8. Final Fantasy III (1990)
9. Dragon Quest VII (2000)
10. Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (1998)
11. Dragon Quest V (1992)
12. Far East of Eden 2 (1992)
13. Sakura Wars (1996)
14. Dragon Quest IV (1990)
15. Final Fantasy V (1992)
16. Xenogears (1998)
17. Dragon Quest II (1987)
18. Sakura Wars III (2002)
19. Kingdom Hearts (2002)
20. Street Fighter II (1992)
Of course DQ7 isn't on the PS mini console, cause the game was a commercial failure in the west. Enix USA even folded after that and never released the already advertised English version of DQ4 for PS1.
Decide for yourself, if Japan or the US got it right on this one.😉

@rjejr I guess the game must be a dud then, if someone like you hasn't played it.😉
Oh wait, it sold 3,5 million units in two weeks and Famitsu readers voted DQ7 "the 9th best video game of all time". It's also my favorite PS1 game, but this is coming from someone who was disappointed with Chrono Cross and FF VIII.🤷🏻‍♂️

Here’s a quick reminder that Mundfish (Atomic Heart, ILL) is financed by the Russian state.
So if you fancy them slowly chiseling away at our democracy, by all means, feel “free” to support them.🤷🏻‍♂️

@Balaam_ I completely agree with your take, except that I find the combat in Elder Scrolls to be even worse. Tried to get into Witcher 3 many times, but the attack animations take forever and are prioritized over responsive controls. Combat is like a clunky, unintuitive, guessing game, often with random outcome. My golden standards are Ys VIII and Elden Ring.
The UI also confuses me with no clear indication on whether item drops are better or worse than my equipment. Best in class here is WoW.

@LogicStrikesAgain I’d love to play GTA6 with a smooth framerate as much as the next guy. But the suits at Take 2 have other plans and will absolutely try to sell us the same game twice, before they’ll allow a 60 FPS-version to hit the market on PS7.
Source: shareholders (only partly kidding).

In memoriam:
Origin Systems, Maxis, Westwood, Bullfrog, Black Box, Criterion, Tiburon, Visceral, Mythic, Pandemic, BioWare and Codemasters.
Thank you to all the wonderful artists and creators.

@ChrisDeku I’m talking about prices during Steam-sales, not RRPs and certainly not inflation.
Indies couldn’t possibly increase sales prices all at the same time without a directive from the platform holder.
Yes, that implies some sort of collusion, but it’s not far fetched, given this background of a monopoly.
You are underestimating just how keenly I’ve kept track of this.😅

@ChrisDeku Did I mention there was an article that discusses this? I stated that this was based on my observation, resulting from closely monitoring all four shops over the last years. Not sure if dyslexic.🤷🏻‍♂️

@ChrisDeku Good point about “Ni No Kuni II” and well made.
However, my main argument is the concerted digital price-hiking effort from a few years ago and that still stands.
It was incentivized by the platform holders, precisely because their shops are monopolies now.

@ChrisDeku “The publishers of the games increased their prices.”
That’s what one would expect, but the platform holders apparently also weigh in.
Valve definitely gave out a directive to all Steam-publishers to increase prices, cause it was clearly a concerted effort, happening across all publishers at the same time.
Also, Bamco’s current “Ni No Kuni II” sale on Xbox sits at double the price of the PSN-version, which makes little sense from a publisher’s point of view.

I’ve monitored PSN, Steam, Xbox-marketplace and the e-shop quite closely over the past 5 years.
Valve, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo significantly jacked up the prices, cause their shops have effectively become monopolies.
Valve is the worst offender in that regard btw.

Zaslav and his upper management goons at WB are almost DC-comically incompetent🙈

As others have pointed out, publishers are often bumping up, instead of lowering the sales prices. Which is what we’ll have to get used to, cause with retail dead, PSN has a de facto monopoly.

@Wendigoindigo You do realize it makes you look like a troll, if you imply that the US has ever started a war to annex another country, right? Apples and oranges…

@Jyc Well, you guys do you, of course. But I can’t enjoy a game with which I’d be supporting an invasion. No, it’s not much, but the tax-money does still help him.
It’s only a video game. It’s not a needed commodity and therefore easily skippable. Act according to your own moral compass🤷🏻‍♂️

@Sveakungen Their main studio is still in Russia. HQ is in Cyprus.

Trying my best to avoid channeling Debbie Downer here, but keep in mind that you’re indirectly supporting Putler, if you buy this game. Owlcat and Saber are Russian studios, which is why I booted both Warhammer-games from my wishlist.

@Gewertzx Sci-Fi you say? Maybe the Atlus part of SEGA can be coaxed into developing Phantasy Star V then?

Heh, I was always much more inclined towards celebrating the 30th anniversary of the SEGA Saturn anyways 🪐

It’s a NO from me, cause € 800.- without a disc drive is insane.
Seems like Sony is none the wiser after the PS3 fiasco and is due for another harsh reality-check.

I’ve been in business meetings with Hartmann, when he was a bigwig at Take 2.
He was arrogant, greedy, condescending and insufferable, which are the “qualities” required, in order to fail upwards in the higher echelons of business management.

I’ve never played worse emulated garbage than "Psychonauts" on PS5. Definitely won’t be touching any other PS2-games, no matter how hard Sony tries to fix that awful emulator.

@Uromastryx Microsoft reported a profit of $86 billion for the fiscal year ending March 2024. The Acti/Blizz price tag was “only” $69 billion.

Art requires time, passion and soul, which is diametrically opposed to shareholder value. Creativity is a fickle thing that doesn’t come around too often, least of all on command.
But corporations never learn.
It’s almost comical how their only answer is to always throw more money at the problem.

Ok... duly filed under "old megalomaniac acting out his delusional self"

Once the greedy get on the bandwagon, you can kiss your favourite media goodbye.
Managers generally treat creative people like crap. But without artists, there would be no product for the silly suits to sell. The same blight already befell comics, music and movies. It's gaming's turn now :/

You’ve butchered the CEO surname just like he gutted his Embracer staff.

I like it when my iconic superheroes aren’t getting killed, WB. Tyvm.

Finally 🤩
I’ve started SMTV on hard difficulty only a couple weeks ago.
Totally expected to like it, but it still blew me away. It’s my favourite Switch game, despite the technical issues. I’ll put it on hold now and wait for the PC port.
As an introvert, the endlessly prating high-school kiddies of Persona are boring AF to me, so it’s mainline SMT exploration and combat gameplay all the way here 👍🏻

Khayl! We can see through your m.o. of always click- and comment-baiting us with articles about teh sexy time. And it’s clearly working.
Sheesh, journos these days… 😅

@Illyrian Prepare your kids to be confronted with inappropriate content, because they will inevitably come across it 🤷🏻‍♂️
Also, Mr. Adams’ incentives as a journalist to maximize clicks/comments for more ad revenue won’t exactly help your case 😢

@Illyrian Well, good luck completely shielding adolescents from inappropriate content in AD 2023.
Please stop making a fuss about sexuality. It’s supposed to be something positive. If you do your parenting job and outfit your offspring with a decent set of values, then there’s nothing to fear.

Well, I never… who knew corporations would wring consumers dry, once they had us in a digital-only chokehold surprised face

Riccitiello seems to tank every company he infests. Despite failing, people like him hop from one CEO position to the next for a lifetime.
Seems that there’s just no accountability once one has accumulated enough wealth.
The brainiacs at HR just be like: “Well, if he’s rich AF, he must be great at what he’s doing.” O_o

Frame rate drops?
Bomberman has been running at a rock-solid 60 FPS on my PC-Engine since 1990, but Konami somehow fails to make it as smooth on PS5?

NISA should fix Trails Into Reverie before churning out pointless PS5-ports.
I was pretty neutral when they took over FALCOM's distribution from XSEED, because I wanted to give them a chance to prove they could do better.
Sadly, Trails Into Reverie is a mess, even 2 months after release and there's no patch in sight either.

As a Trails fan, I obviously love the game, but NISA got about 5% (!!) of all tooltips wrong, with bad grammar, spelling mistakes, missing words and swapped dialog boxes between characters to boot.

The people at XSEED worked their butts off to deliver high quality localizations and did a great job with Cold Steel 1 & 2.
NISA's IDGAF-attitude sucks for all FALCOM fans, but at least we got Zero and Azure out of it.

On the one hand there’s independent Larian Studios and then there’s studios who get embraced by death’s embrace in the form of Embracer group

@DarkSoleride It's a €40 game and the very definition of a hidden gem. I've played the translated PSP-original and it's easily the best action-platformer on that system.
Combat feels great and level-design is fun, so the framerate was the only issue holding it back, but PS4 will bump that up to 60 FPS.
Classic Falcom awesomesauce on an Ys III: Oath in Felghana level.
But beware - don't play it unless it's canon

@Feena Love your comment ^_^
If anyone pulled that derpy face on me, I‘d be laughing at them for days 🤣

@Cordyceps That’s modern journalism to you. Only after them clickz and we’re the ones to blame, for actually falling for it

@KaijuKaiser Why on earth would you assume that I called him a so-and-so because he got his comment removed, rather than because of the actual bigoted content of said comment? O_o

@PixelDragon
Please stop reading tabloids, cause they seem to be whipping your bigotry into a frenzy.
Bear sex is so ridiculously far removed from reality, that you’re supposed to laugh at it, mister concerned parent.

@RonLonDonSwan Your comments in this thread made me want to log in, just to tell you how much I agree with all of your statements. <3

@Rossesh Mainline SMT games are darker, oppressive even, involve more grinding, dungeon-crawling, combat and just more gameplay in general, than those overly chatty Persona highschool/social sim nuisances
Digital Devil Saga on PS2 is just as fantastic as the mainline games btw.
SMT is pulling no punches and will kick your ass, if you arrive to a boss fight unprepared, but I wouldn't want it any other way.
I'm guessing SMT V will likely be announced for PC/PS4/5 after the 1 year Switch exclusivity contract expires, so prolly around October.