Pandalulz

I have a fifteen year old. She does not care about video games AT ALL and never has. She has an XBox because that's where her friends were playing Fortnite and that was just the social event of that particular month. Once they stopped playing, she stopped playing. I think it's just her Netflix on a TV box now. I gave her my PS5 when I upgraded to the Pro and I don't think she has ever turned it on.

I will never catch up

I wish more IP holders would do this instead of just letting them rot. I get that after multiple games in a series, maybe the current developers just don't know where to take the IP anymore. It makes more sense for someone with a great idea to make an official sequel than to end up with the millionth copy cat that was influenced by the IP. As far as the jump to other platforms, I don't care, put all the games everywhere. I will pick where I want to play them based on my preference.

I still don't know what I am going to do with these. Part of me wants to play it, part of me wants to wait until 2nd Chapter is out at least, but then a third part of me is fine having played the originals and moving on.

It's the only FromSoft game that I have tried to play, because I love things that embrace cosmic horror, but the gameplay just felt so sluggish, like everything was moving through molasses. It pretty much just cemented that FromSoft was not for me and I gave up after a couple of hours. If this is the best of that, then what does the worst feel like?

This was a very cute video. I didn't buy anything because of it so I don't know if it succeeded, but it was an enjoyable five minutes of a silly man doing a silly thing.

@Contimaloris That podcast for me is Axe of the Blood God. I've been listening to them for about a decade now, starting when they were all at USGamer. I love my Playstation, but more importantly I love me some RPGs. Before about 2015 though, I was as staunchly against listening to podcasts as I was watching streaming video. I eventually came around on one of those.

@Contimaloris It's funny, because I sort of did it backwards. I appreciated how ahead of its time GiantBomb was with their focus on video, but I am an old, I don't want to watch things. So when he entered his cranky old man talking to himself phase, I was like, "now... now I can relate."

I guess I should try Sacred Symbols again. I've listened to it multiple times over the years and something about Colin's attitude always ends up turning me off after a while.

@Contimaloris I enjoy his podcast. It's effectively "old man yells at cloud about video games for three hours" every week. Once in a while, he does an interview like this.

I have played too many JRPGs. When you tell me it will have faith and religion, I am assuming I get to kill god. Do not disappoint me.

I just bought Veilguard for $20 on clearance so oops on me. I don't really care about the other stuff. I played the turtles games when they were new.

I tried one of the PSP games and bounced off so hard I have never had any interest in coming back, even though the new games seem barely even related gameplay wise. But it also seems like a game that would be infinitely more fun if I had friends, which I don't.

The Yakuza / Like a Dragon games have been talked up the last couple of years enough that I look forward to trying them, but I haven't actually had the time to pull the trigger on one yet, despite having several through essential.

Yay, a new bump for this article. I have now played the entire series up through Reverie (just started Daybreak) in the time between the first comment on this thread and now.

It's a lot! But every time I finish one, I need to know where it's going next.

There weren't any turn-based RPGs, so it sucked... or whatever... but then Daybreak 2 came out two days later, so who actually cares. The funny part of all the "where are the first-party games?" discourse is that I realize I haven't REALLY cared at all about Sony's first-party games since Legend of Dragoon. I suppose I will just have to keep being salty for another decade or two. Buy why, there are so many other great games to play?

@ShogunRok I will never stop being amused by the fact that the world of Zemuria has basically gone from the middle ages, all the way through the industrial revolution, and straight on into cyberpunk in something like five years of in-game time.

I just finished Reverie and started Daybreak 1, I am getting so much closer to caught up. The jump directly from Reverie to Daybreak was kind of jarring. I had gotten so used to the almost never changing party and battle menus after the last five games that it's taking me a long while to adjust.

It sounds like Daybreak 2 might be too close to Reverie without spending the time to earn it's coda style story. I will say that the Trails to Walk system in Reverie made the story go by so much quicker, so I definitely am cool with them breaking up the story that way again. I can't stop playing now, must get caught up.

I still haven't gotten around to watching it but perused the list. It's definitely going to be a year for 3rd person action games.

Shinobi looks very nice.

I don't think I will play it, it doesn't seem to be my kind of thing, but I am here for the memes that will definitely come out of it. It does seem like that kind of game.

At least they said "operational issues."
I assumed they were going to say they "improved stability."

The figures from some of my least beloved Final Fantasies look nice. I am sure they will cost all of the monies.

I got locked out because my primary PS5 is in my daughter's room at her mom's house. I really only game on my PS5, but I went and found something else to do, no biggy. For myself, it's just a reminder of how ridiculously arbitrary family sharing is on PlayStations, it's so silly. As for the compensation, it doesn't really make a difference to me. My essential plan has been on auto renew for so many years. I suppose my credit card will just auto charge five days later. And I have a million "free" games from essential I don't have time play, what would another one get me? shrug

I did think it was funny that around the same time I saw this article, DekuDeals sent me an email saying a handful of physical games on my wishlist went on sale at GameStop.

I was glad to see the GotG game so high up there. If anybody out there is looking for a Mass Effect game, it's about as close to the original trilogy's combat and story telling style as you will get. This game's version of the guardians is so much better fleshed out than the movies. It's too bad it got buried under the bad press from the Avengers GaaS fallout.

Heh, I just got a notification on my phone app that a game I installed two days ago completed installing and now my PS5 can at least load single-player games again without a license verification error.

@RoomWithaMoose I am not really complaining on my end, because stuff happens and I get that. But I am actually that person you describe. I technically have Steam here on my work laptop but I don't really own any games on it, because I mostly just buy stuff on PSN.

The part that sucks for me, is that I set the kid's PS5, at her mom's house, with the sharing and online setting so she can play my games, but it means that the one here in my apartment has been telling me that it can't verify my digital license for my single-player games all day. It would be nice if we could set more than one system to that setting... long sigh

All that being said, it's a good time to catch up on some reading.

@DualWielding In FFXIV, when you touch the pad, the mouse appears and you can move the cursor around the screen to manipulate stuff. It's ok for clicking on stuff, but it's awkward as hell to drag and drop stuff. I still managed to use it to rearrange my whole UI anyway.

I doubt I would use it to play a game, but it would make rearranging my FFXIV UI so much easier. Like others above mentioned, it would be nice if there were a list of supported devices because my Logitech K915 isn't supported either, which I just want to use to chat.

I got my first trophy in Trails into Reverie on December 7, 2024 and got the trophy for watching the stratum five daydream in the post game last night on February 4, 2025, so I've done right around 100 hours in two months. And honestly, I feel like even then I've rushed, since I've done almost nothing else for the last two weekends. I've played no other games. And that's doing very little of the side stuff, no Pom Party, no Vantage Masters, and I still haven't finished the Daydream stories or beat the "final" boss, which is my personal goal for completion. I love these games, but they are way too dang long.

I played it on Gamecube and couldn't get into it. I think at the time I was having my own personal backlash against turn-based games. Now I relish them when they come around so I could see myself enjoying it much more if it came back.

I will not bother with the demo because I will just play the game... eventually... after I finish Reverie and Daybreak 1.
I went back and checked achievements and I have apparently played 9.5 of these games in 18 months. I am too invested to stop at this point.

On the US PSN store, it already has a 10% discount on the pre-order, not that I would ever recommend anyone pre-order anything ever, but if you are going to anyway, you might as well save a few bucks.

I scrolled through that video and I can only gather that the inspiration appears to be "three kids in a trenchcoat trying to sneak into a movie theater."

It feels like you only get the gold rewards on the campaigns that make you spend money anymore, so no more free points,
and it's annoying that you don't get the points if you have already purchased the game beforehand.

I keep doing the campaigns for collectibles when I already own the games and it doesn't require any actual work, but I don't know why. Nobody else sees them, and I only see them on my tiny phone screen where I can barely make them out. It's a wasted effort there.

That being said, when I do buy games, no reason not to take those points and redeem them for cash.

I ordered one when I pre-ordered my Pro and got it in two days, where it sat on a shelf for a month waiting for something to plug into so I guess I got lucky by thinking ahead in that regard.

One thing I have found interesting where physical retailers are concerned, is that I will walk into a store, see systems sitting on the shelf, but if I try the website, it will say none are available for pickup. It almost makes me think they are delisting things from their website to frustrate scalpers. It also frustrates anybody who wants to check inventory before walking into a store, so I don't know if it's for the better or worse.

I let it rest so it can charge my controller, download updates, and because I still don't really know when it backs up cloud saves (is it as soon as you close the game or at some later point?) I still close out my games and apps first though because letting a game standby seems to guarantee the power will go out overnight.

Looks very nice. I am currently on Reverie and played the Sky trilogy on Steam, so maybe after the Sky SC remaster comes out, I will circle back around to it again. I don't want to get stuck on that cliffhanger a second time.

@NEStalgia long sigh I built my PCs from 1994 to 2015 and that one died right in the middle of COVID, the crypto boom, and supply chain collapse, so I kind of just gave up on it and went all in on my PS4, now PS5. I had stopped having fun with the technical bits a long time ago anyway. Personally, for whatever folks can complain about MS doing to XBox, they've done that so much worse to Windows. I have to use it for work and don't want to touch it at all if I don't have to otherwise. Valve has made great strides with the Proton experiment from what I have messed with in Linux and it does work decently, but I give them a couple more years until whatever couple of guys working on that project get bored and move on to something else and the whole thing collapses, just like happened with the SteamBox before. While there are more developers than ever porting things to PC, it feels like it's a coinflip whether the port is any good and a lot of the time they just run better on worse equipment on console because it's better optimized.
TL;DR, I appreciate the PC ecosystem, but after thirtysomeodd years, I am too jaded to care anymore.

@NEStalgia I am a perfect example of this. I have been what you might call a Playstation fanboi all the way back to the first system, but that's because that's where the nerdy JRPGs lived, and it's where the nerdy JRPGs continue to live. I watch those retrospectives about all of the Sony first party stuff over the years and realize I've played very few of them considering.

@OldGamer999 They'll keep making consoles. It'll be the best place to play Gamepass.

RIP. What a run! I wish I would have learned to appreciate Falcom much sooner. I have spent the last two to three years playing through every Ys remake and new release, and just finished Cold Steel 4 after all of the previous games. Reverie coming up next.

I found it quite telling that there was almost no dialogue in the whole trailer. I can't decide if that means it will be better or if they know it's still terrible and are just hiding it.

Pretty much anything before Symphonia. I somehow completely missed the existence of Tales before then.

That being said, I still haven't played the last three either, so I need to get on that.

@pyrrhic_victory My brain couldn't discern the difference between the "announcements and reveals" answer and the "ads" one honestly. What's the difference?

@UltimateOtaku91 The cynic in me says they can't announce Persona 6 until they've announced Refantazio: the better version and a bunch of spin-off games first.

I don't really watch videos or streams at all, but I probably spend more time casually browsing websites like this one while doing other things than I actually have downtime to spend playing games, so there's that.

I did what I said I was going to do and pre-ordered one and passed the original fat down to my kid to replace her PS4. The only thing I have played on it, because it's what I was already in the middle of playing, is the PS5 version of Trails of Cold Steel IV. I suppose it's because the game has a generally unlocked frame rate, but it does anecdotally and unscientifically seem to run a little better. There were a lot of spots on the fat where the game would stutter during cutscene transitions and lots of models on the screen that SEEM, best I can tell, to have smoothed out. It was certainly perfectly playable before, but hey, improvements are improvements. I will take what I can get.

Hmmm... I guess at some point I will check this out, because I eventually try everything Airship Syndicate puts out, to varying degrees of enjoyment (I just love the way they look). The problem is that I really can't quite get the gameplay loop now that it's offline. I was under the impression it was kind of Monster Hunter-ish maybe in its original incarnation. So is it just a bossrush or are there actual levels, what's happening here?

Edit: So I watched the trailer a couple of more times, and saw the Randomized Dungeon tag, so I guess more third-person Diablo?

I will let you know in two years when the inevitable better version comes out.

I'm not sure what using it consists of really. I picked the single player preset and it shows me my trophy list, controller battery level and storage when my PS5 turns on. I also changed the background to something with a darker theme. It's still better than the pile of streamer garbage it replaced even if I don't really use it.

I mean, tangentially, the site gave a 90 to what will inevitably turn out to be a $70 two year early access game before the final version actually releases (Metaphor) and you have to pay for it again. If there's a company that's trained me to wait at least three years (final version + sale) before buying one of their games, it's definitely Atlus.