Matroska

It depends on the DLC to me. Shadow of the Erdtree takes 25 hours to finish and 51 to do everything, Astro Bot takes 12 to finish and about 17 to do everything. This DLC is more substantial than a full priced game. It's like The Witcher 3 Blood & Wine too - bigger, longer and better than most non-DLC games. It seems weird to ignore them because of a term that doesn't really sum up what it covers - e.g. Blood & Wine is DLC, so is a bikini in DoA, so is some BGM for DQXI. So with that term we're covering an expansion to game, a skin, and some music - all DLC.

It's not that you need to grind - god knows the encounter rate is high enough to keep you at the right level - but these people aren't buffing or debuffing, and aren't using the different items because they're probably used to FF where you very rarely use items.

Status effects are actually viable to use on bosses too, unlike most RPGs, so like what's basically blindness from FF, and paralysis, silence etc. This version is actually considered easier than previous versions because the game is constantly throwing stat seeds at you and the mechanics have been changed so Wisdom increases spell damage whereas it didn't in previous versions. Classes that were useless before are now actually good.

You can actually beat the game using only the hero, though that does actually involve a lot of grinding...
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gbc/450388-dragon-warrior-iii/faqs/31969

@get2sammyb Dating sims tend to not have much of a story, if any, you just do daily stuff and basically level up affection. Usually pretty sandboxy. Visual novels are typically massive stories, again just a novel with pics of who's talking, like Fate/stay night (it's twice the length of Lord of the Rings, amazingly) that may have branching paths. I can see why there a crossover in some people's minds because a lot of VNs also have romance stuff.and waifus.

>Visual novels can be fun, but this seems like it’ll run out of steam quite fast
Is Sammy getting "dating sim" and "visual novel" mixed up? Visual novels are, well, novels - but on a computer and with pictures and sometimes choices. This doesn't look like that.

@Northern_munkey Well the situation is cut from different cloth, you could say, because there's only one hardware configuration (as in combinations of different parts) and each game is specifically tailored to that config. Whereas with PCs there are countless combinations not to mention the millions of combinations of software that people could have running. Whereas consoles are a closed system with a known hardware configuration. That's basically the whole point of consoles. You give up on the best hardware and control over the system and software, and in return you get a simple experience that just works for you, right out of the box.

@SilentBluntman Well the reason I picked ME is that it was always just a part 1. It's full of loose ends, and choices that don't do anything until 1 or 2 games later. Of course, yeah, most games are just made as a one-off and then they're like "oh wow, that sold well - let's do more" but when games are released just as a part 1 without calling themselves that, people don't normally mind. Also, think of expansions that are there to finish the story too, like StarCraft Brood War and Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction. And the new Diablo IV one, come to think of it.

As for the cost, bear in mind we're talking like £60 spread out over 3 or 4 years. I'd get it if you paid £60 and the game ended after a bit and said "please pay another £60 to carry on" and kept doing that in quick succession. But this is a series of long games that come out once every 3 or 4 years. Yeah it's £180 in total, but over almost a decade. I don't think people are going to feel the sting of that. I do think they'd feel the sting of a convoluted story that's falling over itself to be meta as f**k while also, for a lot of players, being quite tough and stressful.

@SilentBluntman I don't think it's that. It's not like Mass Effect was called Mass Effect: Part 1. Obviously, we call it ME1 now but it was simply ME at the time. Or, I guess, LotR: Fellowship of the Ring instead of LotR: Part 1. I think the drop-off was a mixture of negative reaction to the plot changes, particularly the time ghosts, and the gameplay being so different - and honestly quite gruelling compared to the original which was pretty smooth sailing.

Also, if I unknowingly bought something which was just part 1, and assuming I actually liked it, I'd be really inclined to buy the next parts when they came out.

@AinsleyE Yeah, and like XII they'll probably have an anchor coming down from the sky rather than have it land on the ground like in the original. It's way too big to land in most places.

@get2sammyb Yeah, of course products being available is the default but it's not the default that they get discounted within days of launch. That shows a critical lack of sales (at least here) rather than simply a healthy supply of products. Within a week retailers are choosing to cut into their own profits to get rid of stock. Even those damn scalpers are doing it and given how greedy they are that's saying something.

The Switch got a fairly slow start, decent but not great, and went on to be the 2nd best selling console of all time, so it can certainly be turned around... But it also wasn't discounted within about a week. I guess you can at least say not selling out AND being discounted is a sign of Sony overestimating the appeal.

@Lofty1985 GPUs that cost twice that much have sold out (within minutes of release in some cases) so it's not just the high price, I'd say, but the combo of price and the perception that the improvements it brings are somewhat lacking

https://www.pcmag.com/news/despite-high-price-nvidias-rtx-4090-sells-out-fast-on-launch-day

You could get half a disc drive with those savings.

I'm more interested in whatever instant classic comes out at the same time and totally overshadows it, like BotW and Elden Ring did before. I mean, with how the timing is lining up with the Switch 2, there is actually a decent chance the next Zelda releases around the time of the next Horizon.

@ECharles Not to speak for him but I can't possibly summon up any interest in what games a group of complete strangers liked. It's like getting hyped to see what Bob from Tennessee's favourite ice cream flavour of the year was. It's not even like we get a written review. Imagine on this site if we got no articles for a year but then suddenly one from an anonymous person saying "I most liked that DBZ game 😀"

@ApostateMage Did you drink the tea at a steady 60fps?

@Czar_Khastik What if they add trophies to the site for reading articles about nothing?

@Ralizah Good point, I somehow missed that he'd said that. He always seems to make mistakes like that.

@dskatter What's the CPU got to do with being Pro enhanced? It has the same CPU as the normal PS5, doesn't it? This game does, however, have a performance and fidelity mode, meaning it only runs at 30fps with the higher quality graphics, so they could have had the Pro do it as fidelity quality but actually at 60fps.

@Savage_Joe "And the biggest indicator of all, Bioware canned all plans for DLC"
Can you find a post where EA talk about their plans for DLC that they then cancelled? Because over a month before the game came out, they said there wouldn't be DLC, it wasn't something said only after release. And at no point did they say they planned for DLC.

And incidentally, the only time I can think where DLC plans have been cancelled was with FFXV. One of the best-selling FFs, having sold over 10 million as of 2022. So even if your fictitious point was true it wouldn't relate to the success of the game. But as far as I can see it, it's not true anyway.

@BIG3 Jesus Christ, that one pic... I mean they're all good but you know the one I mean

@KingPev Obviously microtransactions come into it, but to recoup $76 billion it would take roughly 1.26 billion sales of CoD at $60 per game. To put that into perspective, the original Xbox lost Microsoft somewhere between $5 and $7 billion it was such a flop. They've now lost 11 to 15 times that amount until they make it back - and soon enough to matter. I know it's not just about CoD, but to even break even if it was just down to CoD (just as an example) they'd need to sell 50 million copies of CoD each year for the next 25 years. Well, more than that since a large cut goes to the platform holder. The best selling CoD of all time is apparently Black Ops with 30 million but that's total sales across numerous years, not just in one year.

As we both said, microtransactions are part of it too but we have no way of knowing how profitable they are each year. But we do know that the decision to buy Activision Blizzard was seen as so bad that the higher ranks of MS stepped in and made them release various exclusives on PS5.

@JuiceboxMeister Yeah okay. I wasn't saying "men" in a consciously gender focused way. I'm a man myself. I was just saying it as a default thing - if anything sexist against women as I accidentally assumed it would be mainly men. The main point was it was legislation by people out of touch with what they're legislating about.

@Titntin "Virtually all of the time" isn't the same as "all of the time". Look at the meaning of the word. It means "almost": https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/virtually

It's that choice of words that I read in the article that made me say what I said. If I hadn't read the article I'd have assumed it was a consistent 60 since it's first party and originally on PS4.

It's a bit underwhelming that what was originally a PS4 game, albeit an amazing looking one, still isn't getting a completely consistent 60fps. It seems consoles are doomed to not have 60 across the board. It's a shame they don't offer more specific graphics settings so you could tweak something and get it to stay at 60.

@LifeGirl Yeah, well at least Subsistence. That was the first MGS that had controls I actually felt comfortable with. MGS2 was awful with its weird aiming and shooting controls using the pressure sensitive face buttons.

Rebirth obviously has great music but for me it's arguably not the same thing since the original compositions happened in the 90s for the PS1 FFVII. I mean, if you don't look at it that way, SE could release a game each year with some FFVII music in and every year it should win awards. Just keep releasing slightly different versions of Theatrhythm, a game with dozens of the best pieces of videogame music ever.

This is my surprised face 😐

Imagine if the ban was for people aged 50 plus watching TV because it features biased opinions and endless adverts that try to alter people's opinions on various products. This is the classic thing of old men not knowing anything about what they're legislating.

Imagine if PC gaming sites wrote an article for every game that looks better on higher settings every time a new graphics card came out. I know people that have a Pro are excited but, again, people with a new GPU are excited too so that should be justifiable too, right? And if you don't like the article, don't read it? Well the headline already conveys the content of the article and you can't like or dislike it without reading it.

It's not the fact that they're covering the Pro, of course they should, but at this point it feels like ad bots have taken over the site. You can journalistically cover something without spamming and without sounding like you're posting on the official Playstation Twitter account. Where are the articles about the games that still don't consistently run at 60, like Elden Ring? Eurogamer is covering that kind of stuff in a more journalistic, less fanboyish way.

As a person playing rogue on hard mode, it's not all that great. Not being able to block so having to do either perfect parries (with 5/5 difficulty for timing on hard mode) or dodging all the time is annoying. You take massive damage from being hit so trying to time a parry in the midst of a storm of special effects isn't a great idea. And the fact there are no rogue things to do, like picking locks, means rogues are just fiddly warriors.

>the edgy Shadow Dragons. After that, it's the Antivan Crows at 16%
Surely the Crows are the edgier ones? The Shadow Dragons are nice people freeing slaves. Also you have Dorian on your side who's about as edgy as a puppy, albeit a snarky puppy.

Just Veilguard. After this, I'm buying Ys X and Metaphor ReFantazio. I did start a playthrough of ME1 before Veilguard, being in a Bioware mood, as well as all three previous Dragon Ages - basically the gaming equivalent of when my dog tries to carry a log in her mouth instead of a normal stick. I might go back to them at some point.

@danzoEX I know. It feels more like Push Pro than Push Square. It feels like every article should have a paid promotion tag, like certain YT videos.

Ever... Until the PS6 in a few years.

@Kienda That won't happen. This is only like getting a somewhat better GPU for you PC so now you can raise the settings. The games can be on high settings instead of medium. The PS5 will continue to get medium to high settings and the Pro will get high to very high, depending on framerate choice.

These games are still coming out on PC and will still be scalable to different hardware tiers. Most modern games still run on a 970, a card from 2014. And yeah, at 60fps depending on the graphics settings. And the Pro isn't that powerful. It can't run Elden Ring at 60fps, a game that came out on PS4, and that does actually run at 60fps on a $350 graphics card.

Do you think love can bloom, even under the sea?

But it still can't do Elden Ring at 60fps. If it can't even do that, and PCs can, it seems pretty underwhelming.

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2024-can-ps5-pro-run-elden-ring-at-60-frames-per-second

"A lot of the game will run at 60fps, but it's hardly consistent and for the most part you're in the 50s - though truly challenging scenes can take you into the 40s". That's not performance mode, but apparently even that mode can't maintain it.

@Secryt The problem is the game isn't a 0/10 or 1/10. That's why it's review bombing, not simply because they didn't like it. Imagine if I gave OoT 1/10 because I don't like the political message that having an unelected monarchy is a good thing. Imagine if I'm referring to that as psyops and royalist propaganda. It's safe to say, if I did do that, I'd need therapy.

@Nepp67 You don't have to have her in your party at all, other than the initial recruitment mission (and then all she does is talk about dragons) let alone spend the majority of your time with her.

@zupertramp Yeah, what we're seeing here is like if a guy had a PC and started to play The Witcher 3, for example, on medium settings and then put it on high settings and started screaming about his face melting and how he's now basically playing the Witcher 4. It's a bit sad too because it still looks worse than it could on a PC so, even though I mainly game on PS5, it does reinforce the console peasant stereotype.

I feel like if the Push Square guys got a good PC, they could entertain themselves all day by opening games and raising draw distance and texture resolution. They'd be in tears of joy from just turning on ambient occlusion.

@Czar_Khastik Thanks, now I'm in gamer prison in America for not liking CoD.

I do wonder if Sony intentionally put underwhelming games up when the new releases are so impactful. Like, we have Veilguard (the first new entry in one of the main WRPG series in a decade), Metaphor ReFantazio, a new CoD, and more obscurely but relevant to my interests, a remake of Romancing Saga 2, a classic JRPG, and a new Ys game, one of the longest running JRPGs. And I'm sure many other major games, but those are the ones on my personal radar - plus CoD which I'm not a fan of but obviously loads of people are. I bet when GTA6 comes out, that month will be bad too.

@Northern_munkey I came in to say the same thing. It's really weird to refer to this as an Xbox game, sounds like he isn't familiar with gaming history (and I often get that impression from his articles). It's like calling Sonic "a classic Playstation series".

I'm going to get it but on PC. I have quite a bit of money saved up so I could get a Pro but it's a big chunk of the money it'd take to get a really good PC (about half to a third) so I'd rather just take the plunge rather than burn that money on hardware that's worse than a PC and will be replaced by the PS6 in a few years.

Not to be all doom and gloom, but this console gen has just convinced me there's no reason to buy consoles anymore other than not being able to afford a PC. Long gone are the days when, say, the SNES or PS1 were their own distinct things from a PC rather than just a lower spec PC with less games, more expensive games, and paid online.

I like the Dragon Quest slime that's pretending to be a PS5.

@KoopaTheGamer This is actually the PS5 Pro enhanced version of SimAnt. Behold the power of the Pro.

@Absymbel Well if you buy a PS5 Pro you can be confused and aroused at 60fps in 4k.

Figuratively literally? 🤔

There'll always be performance and fidelity because however good it looks at 60fps, it'll always look better if you ramp up the settings until it can only manage 30.

@Fishnpeas Talking about "polishing your sword" and burping isn't adult humour. It's very childish. Imagine a professional standup comedian going on stage and going "any of the men here like to, ahem, polish their weapons ehehehe! Burp!" It's really cringy and there wasn't anything to redeem the character either.

Veilguard. I'm playing on hard mode (Underdog) and it's brutal. Most attacks take off ⅓ to ½ of my health. I can't block, just parry - and the timing is really specific. I really like the different areas, the different things to discover and the way you open up new areas. I've felt really involved in the story too.

While there is an MCU dialogue element to Harding and Bellara, Harding was like that in DAI, and DA has always had stuff like that; Alistair (and the Warden if you choose a certain voice) say "Warden senses tingling!" in DAO. Not to mention Alistair's famous "Swooping... Swooping is bad" line. And talking of "where's my dark tone?" it does have that, but also lighter stuff. Like the series always has. See Oghren's many banters about w*nking in DAO or scenes like this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gb6v62TUQLg

@Lavishturtle They said a while ago they weren't doing DLC. I'm not sure why sites are reporting it now as if it's a new thing. Here's an article saying the same thing from over a month ago:
https://www.thegamer.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-no-plans-for-dlc-inquisition

It's also done well critically; professionally, Steam user reviews, PSN user reviews and Xbox user reviews (the latter two both around 4.5/5). And as another article on here says, it's the most successful launch for a single-player EA game on Steam in history.

@Deityjester "9.0!? Think they need to start doing substance tests in the push square offices"
Talking of tests, maybe an eye test is required here 😉 - it says 8. The 9 is the user score.